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sunblock
Is Your Sunblock Effective?
Yesterday several news outlets published the results of a study that said "four out of five brand-name sunscreens either provide inadequate sun protection or contain chemicals that may be unsafe." The report comes from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and has been heavily criticized by sunblock makers, although their complaints are of the general sort ("they don't understand sunblock!") or vaguely hysterical ("they'll convince people to stop using sunblock!"). We don't know how valid the study ultimately is, but here are the basics—and regardless of the more sensational claims, their list of the best sunblocks may help you when choosing a product. More »
A Consumer Reports study finds that 79% of consumers surveyed say they plan on buying a car with better fuel economy. [Consumer Reports]
early adopters
It's Official: Early Adopters Are Jackasses
A new study by Mindset Media and Nielsen Online has created a better profile of gadget lovers who tend to buy new technology early and often—and it's no longer believed that they're just "wealthy young males." Instead, the early adopter type tends to score high in leadership and assertiveness, but low in modesty.
More »Avid tech consumers were also likely to be low in modesty and may be perceived as conceited or arrogant by others.
Low levels of modesty also correlate with what Welch calls "badge-buying", or a tendency to buy luxury brands. "So there's an element of pride in being able to have the latest and greatest, not just in the realm of technology, but in all other areas."
survey says
81% Of Americans Hate Mandatory Binding Arbitration
According to science, even the President is more popular than mandatory binding arbitration. A recent poll shows that Americans hate everything about the extrajudicial resolution system, from its inescapable omnipresence, to its unappealable decisions that rob consumers of their day in court. The poll provides a refreshing contrast to a different study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which found that Americans love mandatory binding arbitration more than pie. More »
disputes
If You Happen To Prevail In Arbitration, Get Ready To Lose On Appeal
Arbitration is even worse than we thought. We already knew that consumers lost 94% of the extra-judicial proceedings, but new data shows that the few who manage prevail are likely to have their wins overturned on appeal. More »
consumerism uber alles
Money Can Apparently Buy Happiness
Feeling down? Money might help, according to Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The Wharton economists released a paper arguing that countries with higher gross domestic products have happier citizens. The study shatters the conventional wisdom known as the Easterlin Paradox, which holds that GDP and happiness are largely unrelated. More »
customer satisfaction
American Customer Satisfaction Drops
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) dropped again for the second consecutive quarter to 74.9. Why does this matter? "When customer satisfaction declines, consumers have less enthusiasm for repeating experiences that no longer provide the same gratification," says Professor Claes Fornell. AKA, they'll be spending less money.
conflict of interest
Liggett Cigarette Company Paid For 2006 Lung Cancer Study
CT scanning, a promising approach to detecting lung cancer at early, treatable stages, has been dealt a setback with the revelation that the most prominent study so far in support of it was funded almost entirely by a cigarette company—with the funds funneled through a foundation set up by the study's author, Dr. Claudia Henschke, reports the New York Times. Although the funding revelation doesn't negate the results of the study, it raises huge conflict of interest flags and reveals how a tobacco company secretly influenced professional opinion by funneling $3.6 million into the foundation over a three year period. More »
complaints
New Report Says FCC Fails At Tracking Customer Complaints
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report yesterday that says that while the FCC processes about 95% of the complaints that come in, it takes some sort of enforcement action in only about 9% of them. "The GAO said it was unable to determine why the [other] investigations were closed without action because 'FCC does not systematically collect these data.'" The FCC uses five separate databases and "about 46,000 paper files" to track complaints, and the GAO said "made it difficult to get answers to basic questions like how long it takes the agency to close an investigation and the total dollar amount it assesses in fines." More »
For the retail managers lurking here: an analysis of data from a "US specialty retailer" shows that not reducing staff during lean times leads to an increase in profit margins. [The Times South Africa]
studies
Service Techs Waste 2.3 Hours Per Day When No One Is Watching
Probably the number one complaint we get from readers about cable and phone service is how the guys never show up when they're supposed to, or even they day they're supposed to. As roving lone tech support cowboys, is it a case of the mice will play when the cat's away? Look at how much more efficient field agent service techs got when managers did ridealongs in this McKinsey study. The company was able to recover 2.3 hours of lost productivity and increase jobs per day completed from 6.3 to 8.5. Inside, how the company recovered even more lost productivity by implementing a new dispatch system capable of on-they-fly scheduling... More »
studies
"Free" has a magic effect on people's minds, according to research by Dan Ariely (whose new book, Predictably Irrational could become the Freakonomics of 2008). He did an experiment giving people a choice between a "high-value" and a "low-value" product, a Lindt's chocolate and a Hershey's, respectively, and nothing. When the price was set at 1 cent for the Hershey's and 15 cents for the Lindts, 14% chose the Hershey's and 36% chose the Lindt's. What do you think happened when the price was reduced by one cent for both items?
More »
Consumers Behave Stupidly When Things Are "Free"
"Free" has a magic effect on people's minds, according to research by Dan Ariely (whose new book, Predictably Irrational could become the Freakonomics of 2008). He did an experiment giving people a choice between a "high-value" and a "low-value" product, a Lindt's chocolate and a Hershey's, respectively, and nothing. When the price was set at 1 cent for the Hershey's and 15 cents for the Lindts, 14% chose the Hershey's and 36% chose the Lindt's. What do you think happened when the price was reduced by one cent for both items?
More »
health
Beware Dirty Lemon Wedges At Restaurants
The slightly alarmist HealthInspections.com has a story about dirty lemon wedges in restaurants—apparently they're a "witch's brew of bacteria," to use the hilariously over-the-top language of the video narrator, who speaks in a parody of a newscaster voice. Our favorite trick of theirs: overlaying gigantic bacteria animations on everyday objects, as you can see in this screen capture. But anyway, the point is a microbiologist from New Jersey found various bacteria on three quarters of the lemons she tested from 21 different restaurants: "The very first sample that we took was loaded with fecal bacteria." More »
usury
Study Says Payday Lenders More Prevalent In Areas Of High Christian Conservative Power
A law professor and associate professor of geography set out to create the most comprehensive map of U.S. payday lenders to date. What they found, to their surprise, was "a surprising relationship between populations of Christian conservatives and the proliferation of payday lenders." And it's not a side effect of a poor population that happens to be Christian, according to the authors: "Our research showed that the correlation between payday lenders and the political power of conservative Christians was stronger than the correlation between payday lenders and the proportion of a population living below the poverty line." More »
investing
Study Links Speeding Tickets And Risky Trading
People who get a lot of speeding tickets also engage in risky investing behavior, according to a new study. Finnish researchers compared a speeding ticket database and a database of all the trading portfolios of Finnish households. Their findings suggest that for these speeders, a sensible long-term investment strategy simply isn't interesting enough for them. They crave the thrill and excitement of churning over their investments more frequently. Each successive speeding ticket and investor received correlated to an 11 percent increase in their portfolio turnover. On average, the stocks they bought didn't do any better than the ones they had just sold.
Sensation Seeking, Overconfidence, and Trading Activity (PDF) [via NYT]
(Photo: Getty)
studies
Survey Says: Half Of UK Men Would Give Up Sex For 50-Inch Plasma TV
A British electronics retailer asked 2,000 men and women what they'd give up in exchange for a 50" plasma TV, and according to them, "47 percent of men would give up sex for half a year." Among women, the number drops to about a third who are wiling to forgo sex. We're not going to pretend for a second that this study is in any way scientific, but still—six months? Seriously? More »
health
