Decision Bias & Profitability

Reasons and the top reasons folks don't get their kitchen knives sharpened?

This is 3Bits & Change, an email about building a service and retail business. This one was written after a stop-n-go drive home from a Vikings preseason game.

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A few days ago I found myself wondering, again, about the deeply emotional topic of kitchen knife sharpening. I say deeply emotional because I challenge you to find a more emotional topic than anyone’s kitchen knives.

These deep emotions go for the positive and the negative. These things carry stories across generations. Most of them were gifts and they can create visceral, non rational, reactions unlike spoons, sheet pans or spatulas. They drive fear. They spark joy. And nearly all of them are dull.

Only single digit households are sharpening yearly. Really.

Why don’t more than single digit percentages of American households sharpen their knives each year… from a psychological perspective?

Until I can fund primary research to help answer the question I’ve been doing some reading and research on my own about behavior in general and making some leaps to sharpening kitchen knives as a topic.

The purpose? I want to increase revenue through a refined brand voice and higher then average conversion rate for our in store displays as well as our ads.

//no.1 - Bias’

Here’s a list of cognitive bias’ that stop humans from doing things and some plain language expressions of the thinking as each might relate to sharpening.

Present Bias - “Next time.”

Status Quo Bias - “They’re probably not that bad.”

Learned Helplessness - “Tried. Did not work.”

Identity Bias - “That’s for pros.”

Temporal Discounting - “I’ll wait until they’re really bad.”

Avoidance Loop - “I’m embarrassed.”

Perfection Paralysis - “I’m still researching.”

Normalization Bias - “I’ll just push harder.”

Effort Aversion - “Where do I even go for that?”

Decision Fatigue - “I’ll do it later.”

//no.2 - The Big Three

I think the biggest of the buckets for avoiding sharpening are (1) Effort Aversion, (2) Present Bias and (3) Temporal Discounting.

We see these on the regular at the shop when folks drop off for service.

//no.3 - Early Expressions

So, I’ve been designing some ad like objects that point at each of these objections folks tell themselves about sharpening. What do you think?

For those avoiding effort…

For those valuing the present more than the future.

For the someday-ers.

Sum

There you have it. Three lines of thought to test. I’m going to aim for some adwords and social content tests and go from there.

On Your Way

What cognitive bias most forcefully stops you from having sharp kitchen knives and loads of joy in cooking? Drop yours in the comments. It’ll help us take our next steps.

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