Choice Architecture, Public Policy and Consumer Research

The dictionary definition of a fellow includes: “a member of a learned society.” joining. Well, wow, what a learned society that I am It has a history dating to the first large scale models of the field, in John Howard, distinguished colleagues like Paul Green, Peter Wright, Russ Belk, Sid Levy, Joe Alba and others, and includes friends like Jim Bettman, Hal Kassarjian, John Lynch and now Ita mar Simonson. I am deeply and truly honored to join this company. I am also the fourth fellow from Columbia. This is neat, not only because we have twice as many as any other school, but also because it reflects a central merit of the school: a culture where doing research is valued above other things, something strongly advocated by my predecessors, like John Howard, and by my good friends and role models, Morris Holbrooke and Don Lehman. I thought I would spend my time today looking backwards briefly, but as anyone who knows me well, I am more motivated by looking forward. I will divide this talk into two sections, the first I’ll call an “an unabashedly sentimental 5 minutes of thanks”, and in the remainder of the talk I will address something more forward looking, talking about how Choice Architecture can make consumer research more relevant. For purposes of publication in the Proceedings, I’ve moved the gratitude section to an appendix, not because saying thank you is unimportant, but to let readers more interested in the future – as op posed to my idiosyncratic past – an easy entrance.