Sentient Insight: the business blog for consumer psychology and consumer marketing

If you’re interested in establishing and maintaining your brand as your targeted customers’ preferred choice (and why wouldn’t you be?), understanding and applying Predecisional Distortion – a behavioral economics irrationality – could be your answer.  In this article, we define Predecisional Distortion and describe how you can apply it to establish and maintain your brand’s preference and choice.

Before we get into the “business” of this article, if you have 3 minutes and 33 seconds to spare, we invite you to listen to Amy Winehouse’s version of the classic song Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? It’s a great track and we think you’ll enjoy it.  Just click on the picture below.  When you’re finished, return to the article and we’ll explain how it applies.

Our apologies to Bill Shakespeare for destroying his famous quote.  Perhaps we can recover by providing marketers some better-spoken advice related to selling their products and services. Our advice is based upon well-founded research on “construal levels.”  Simply stated, construal levels refer to particular cognitive styles consumers use when they evaluate and decide whether or not to purchase a particular product or service. Basically, two levels of construal are most often distinguished: