Generally, when visiting a supermarket, you don't want to waste your precious time by searching for the products you're looking for. In order to help us making decisions, our brains have a few biases in their way of seeing things.

We all know that marketeers are trying to get their products in the centre of a display, and that’s for a very good reason. However, new research shows that there’s another bias that influences our way of checking products. Apparently, our visual attention tends to automatically focus to the upper part of a display when we’re looking for a light-coloured product, and to the bottom for a dark coloured product.

There are only 24 hours in a day for us to get through our to-do lists. So how do we decide what to prioritize? Lucky for us, our brains use cognitive shortcuts to simplify decisions and cut corners. But here’s the catch: cutting corners has consequences. And when it comes to our brain, cutting corners leads to cognitive biases.

2 euros off or a complementary recipe book?

Price-based incentives remain one of the most common types of sales promotion. However, non-monetary incentives have become increasingly more common. Non-monetary incentives mean that consumers receive a free gift (premium) with a purchase of a product. A good example is McDonalds’s Happy Meal, which comes with a free toy.

So what do consumers prefer? 2 euros off or a complementary recipe book? A recent study looked at the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail sector to explain why price cuts are superior to premiums.

Every day, we make decisions between multiple choices and alternatives. After a while, our brains find shortcuts to help us make decisions faster, in a more “efficient” way. This is called fast-thinking, according to Daniel Kahneman, a behavioral economist and author of Thinking Fast and Slow. When we have more time to decide, we begin to refer to our memories and past experiences to make a final choice; this is considered slow-thinking.

From Marylou’s Coffee to Hooters – many food and restaurant concepts have the above-average looks of the serving staff engrained deeply within their brand DNA.

But does it actually work? Do we truly enjoy our food better when it’s handed to us by someone standing high on the attractiveness ladder?

A recent psychological research program – counting an impressive amount of 5 studies –dived into this very question. The researchers investigated in what ways waitresses’ attractiveness spills over into taste expectations and enjoyment.

Their results may surprise you.