Alina Selyukh
speaker
499 appearances
66 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 6d ago
Alina Selyukh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 52 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 17.
Appearances
And so when people think those beans won't grow or there won't be enough, those who need those beans scramble, speculators go nuts, and it all only spirals the price further, which is what's happened. And it doesn't help that this week one of the world's biggest coffee traders made a forecast that Arabica—coffee like I have here— could see supply decline by nearly a quarter in the next cycle.
So I'm sorry to say those prices have already been rising. If you shop at the supermarket, brands like Nescafe, Maxwell House, Folgers, Dunkin', they've all had waves of price increases. They've cited higher cost of the green raw coffee. At your local coffee shop, it really depends. Depends on how they source their products.
But yes, likely they're feeling the pressure to raise prices and they're just trying to assess how to do that without scaring away shoppers. But fact of the matter is, as a world, we are drinking more and more and more coffee. So demand has not waned so far. People so far have been willing to pay those higher prices for their coffee habit. The markets will probably eventually calm down.
Importers I talked to pointed out historically adjusted for inflation. We've actually been paying pretty low prices for a pound of coffee. So maybe it's the days of cheap coffee that are over.
We're going to look for sales, right? We're going to look for sales and we're going to talk about how sales make us feel. All right, let's do it. Where are we going to go shopping?
If teenage Alina knew that you can get paid for knowing stuff about the malls, she'd be really impressed. I cover retail, so I have to shop for science.
Yes. And this is the peak holiday shopping season. There is one question that I always get around this time. You can probably guess what it is. I think I can. Are holiday discounts actually a good deal? That's exactly it. Bingo. And that is really subjective. Honestly, sales can be good. They really can. And it really depends on your budget. It depends on how badly you need whatever this item is.
Or do you even need this item, right? And none of this is science, to be clear. But there is a field of study called consumer neuroscience. And it has a slightly more controversial sibling or maybe cousin called neuromarketing. Oh, OK. And they both study what happens in your brain when you're making purchasing decisions or just generally wearing the shoes of a consumer.
It's more commercial. It's the field that advertisers have embraced. So companies use neuromarketing to get people to fall in love with their brand or to buy their stuff. So some researchers have split off into consumer neuroscience, presenting it as a less corporate field, if that makes sense. But they're definitely linked.
It's not really that complicated as far as science goes, but it's all about the sense of urgency, scarcity, with a sprinkling of imaginative anticipation and FOMO, really.
I'm here to tell you about how you process a sale, how stores push your buttons, and how to outsmart them.
How do you feel about shopping?
I mean, this is kind of the perfect recipe for the stores of that mall. You know, they are thrilled when people like us come in without a plan, with no list, with no budget. It's kind of ideal for them. Right. Because here's what happens when you shop. In your brain, there's a constant push and pull between what can be described as the emotional and the rational parts.
That's Carolyn Yoon, who's one of the top experts on consumer neuroscience. She's a professor of marketing at the Michigan Ross School of Business.
All right, are you ready? I'm so ready. Wait, wait, don't look, don't look. How do you feel right now? I feel okay. Okay, now look at the sale. Buy three, get three free. Clearance for $2. I feel like they have that every day. Everything is so sparkly. Sparkly and shiny. Butterfly! They're jingle bells.
I like how we said it's the magnet for teens and tweens, but I am the one losing my mind over the sparkly things. Yeah, we touched everything. We really did. Okay, so back to how sales work in your brain. So anticipation plays a huge role in getting you to buy stuff.
When you spot something that you like, for example, you might start to imagine yourself having a great new life in which you have jingle bell earrings. Even more so if there's a pleasant memory involved, like if you've had jingle bell earrings before and you are already predisposed to liking them.
Our neural processes are super fast, so a lot starts running through your brain kind of at the same time, including the counterbalance to the reward system, which is the cognitive mechanism, like your prudent little accountant.
That was definitely me shopping under stress. We're living on the edge. But so far, process-wise, pretty straightforward, right? We see something we like, we get excited, then we go, whoa, that's expensive. It's like a mental scale with the dopamine-fueled reward mechanism motivating you on one side and the internal accountant on the other side in your frontal cortex.
Now, guess what happens when you add a sale to the mix? The accountant freaks out. Yes, a sale is like the thumb that tips your mental scale toward buying. Jorge Barraza, who is a consumer psychologist at the University of Southern California, says that just finding a sale, just seeing it, actually registers often as a win already. Of course. It's like delivering its own bolt of joy.
Showing 461–480 of 499 · page 24 of 25
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