Food Lab Talk

Ravi Dhar is the George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing and director of the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management. He is an expert in behavior and branding who brings psychological insights to the study of consumer decision-making. Ravi’s research investigates fundamental aspects about the formation of our choices and preferences. His 4Ps Framework for Behavior Change outlines evidence-based “nudges” that can help make healthy choices easier, aligning behaviors with intentions.

Ravi Dhar: “This notion that providing information leads to better choices – there's very limited evidence for that. Providing information doesn't work because of information overload and because of distraction. It will not get their attention. That's where the researcher has to come in and say, when are people most receptive to this information? And that may not be at the moment of choice. It may be at other moments when they have a little bit more free time and they get this information.”

00:22 Intro to Ravi
01:36 Translating business challenges into research questions
03:36 Understanding what meta preferences reveal about consumer behavior
07:33 Three factors that might sabotage our choices 
11:25 What, how, and when to provide information 
15:20 Persuasion: “Making it fun”
18:35 Process: “Making it easy” 
19:51 Possibilities: “Choice architecture” 
21:11 Person: “Cost of delaying” 
22:54 Understanding the reasonable reasons why people do what they do
26:09 Differentiating between fact-based and feeling-based choices
27:58 Takeaways for changemakers 

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*The views expressed by the guests in this podcast don't necessarily represent the host’s views, nor those of his employer.

What is Food Lab Talk?

A better food system starts with one thing: vision. Food Lab Talk gives global food system changemakers a platform to articulate their vision for the future of food.

The series features interviews with inspiring individuals who are working on the frontlines of many of our most pressing food issues: reducing food loss and waste, enhancing food system transparency, facilitating shifts toward more balanced plant-forward diets, enabling informed individual choices for sustainable lifestyles, and accelerating the transition to a circular food economy. 

Join Google’s Michiel Bakker to meet the leaders taking bold action and answering what each of us can do to create a better food system for us all.