How many times did we visite a restaurant, cafe or make any other purchases not even understanding, why we particularly visited right there or bought that specific product?! It goes without saying that this situation happened to everyone and those subconscious purchases have attracted the attention of some sciences emerging into new theories such as the consumer behavior theory in Behavioural Economics and Marketing.

The junior and senior classes of EVN Wine Academy had the honor to be present at Jeff Pool’s guest lecture about the consumer behavior, the sales growth techniques and some other tricks, which practically can increase the volume of the sales and have their scientific explanations.

Because the classroom was composed of the future winemakers, wine marketing specialists and entrepreneurs, Mr. Pool presented the consumer behavior theory in the context of wine and wine-related fields bringing many examples and case studies from our daily activities, which we hardly ever pay attention to, but in fact, they stand behind most of the purchases we make.

Being a prominent representative of this field, he shared his comprehensive knowledge and experience with the students, which he has built up over the years working in different sectors.

It is worth mentioning that Mr. Pool runs a research project and he was happy to present some of the results, which are quite interesting. One of the examples was food positioning on the menu. It turns out that putting the names of the food or drinks in a random sequence in the menu and in an ordered way will have different results in terms of their sales. The research team has found out that everything else being constant, you will have bigger sales in a case when you position that particular food in a very eye-catching place. Another example is that the product will be sold easily if you highlight it on a menu, say making that bold. On the other hand, if you highlight the price the customer will pay attention to the price more than what he or she would buy otherwise. Those are among the many examples discussed during the guest lecture. This is also called a menu optimization, which seems to be simple enough, but is the cornerstone of the sales growth and profitability. This was a great experience sharing that enabled our students to explore their and others’ behaviors in making purchases.

Jeff Pool has more than 20 years’ experience and has served in many leadership positions both in the public and private sectors.

Currently, he is working as the Program Manager for business and academic research projects at the Texas A&M Human Behavior Lab.