In ancient times, our primate ancestors had to endure periods of starvation with no guarantee of when they would find food.
In favour of evolution, nature associated ‘lack of effort’ with pleasure so that people didn’t die running around purposelessly.
Therefore, conserving energy as a preference over effort is ingrained in us.
Decision-making means mental effort; no matter how strong we are, our ability to make good decisions runs out because of a phenomenon called decision-fatigue.
Decision-fatigue means that each decision we make causes a decrease in the number of resources available to us, leading to the deterioration of the quality of our choices.
This theory has gained such prominence that many renowned politicians and business people make diligent efforts to reduce their basic everyday choices.
Some famous examples are Barrack Obama, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg restricting their choices in clothing.
Obama, during his Presidency, wore only black and blue suits, Steve Jobs was famous for his black turtlenecks, and Mark Zuckerberg is mainly seen in t-shirts.
A human brain mitigates decision-fatigue by setting itself a minimum acceptable cut-off.
This mental strategy is called ‘satisficing’ heuristic (combination of satisfying & sufficing).
For a consumer to consider a product or service, the product or service should have at least ‘this’.
And for an ingredient brand to become ‘this’, it needs to build brand recall.
This is because our mind believes that if we can recall something, it must be important.
Or at least more important than alternative solutions, which we can’t recall easily – this is called the ‘availability’ heuristic.
It is to align with the ‘satisficing’ and ‘availability’ heuristics that ingredient brands such as Intel, Teflon, Tetra Pak & MasterCard advertise to the consumers.
By advertising, ingredient brands improve their Business-To-Consumer consideration, improving their Business-To-Business prospects.
Advertising and high brand recall also convince the customers that ingredient brands are worth paying more for, thus improving profits.
