Defend Your Research [HBR Apr 2014]

In April 2014’s issue of HBR, the Defend Your Research’s article interviewed Anouk Festjens, a PhD student at KU Leuven, Belgium on her study that female study subjects who handled men’s boxers were more willing to take risks and more impatient for rewards than those assigned to evaluate T-shirts or to only look at the boxers. 

Interviewer Alison Beard asked if “underwear sections should be at the front to get people, particularly men, to spend more?”  Hilarious question, but I recall a department store that clears off an area at the entrance with mobile trolleys of discounted items, such as home-wear and female underwear.  I used to think it odd that people would stand at the entrance of a store picking out their underwear while the rest of the world detours around them to enter the store.  Now I wonder, with Beard’s questions, is the store deploying a shrew strategy as Festjens seemed to concur, or is the store just plain uncreative with their mobile store display?