How Our Programmes Work
Articles on this site are structured around specific behavioural mechanisms, applied to specific Romanian commercial environments. Here is how that works in practice.
Mechanism first. Context second. Application third.
Each article begins with a documented behavioural mechanism. Not an anecdote. Not a general observation. A named, studied phenomenon with a research lineage. Anchoring, loss aversion, payment decoupling, scarcity heuristics, social proof. These are the starting points.
From there, the article traces how that mechanism appears in a specific Romanian context. How does anchoring manifest on an eMAG product page specifically? What does a Mega Image planogram look like through the lens of shelf-position research? The connection between mechanism and context is the analytical work.
The application section describes what the mechanism produces in observable behaviour. Not what you should do about it. What it does, according to the research.
Four ongoing research programmes
The Retail Environment Series
An ongoing examination of how physical retail spaces in Romania are structured to influence purchase decisions. Shelf placement, category adjacency, promotional positioning, lighting, and flow are all documented phenomena in retail psychology. This series applies that research to stores readers encounter weekly.
- Planogram science and eye-level placement
- End-cap promotions and impulse mechanics
- Category adjacency and basket expansion
- Queue design and last-minute purchase zones
The Digital Purchase Series
Romanian e-commerce has grown substantially, and with it the deployment of behavioural design techniques in digital interfaces. This series examines specific mechanisms used by platforms operating in Romania. Anchoring, countdown timers, social proof signals, and checkout friction are covered through their academic foundations.
- Price anchoring and reference point theory
- Scarcity signals and loss aversion triggers
- Review presentation and social proof mechanics
- Checkout flow design and System 1 exploitation
The Payment Medium Series
How payment method affects perceived cost and spending volume is one of the most directly applicable areas of behavioural economics research. This series covers Prelec and Simester's foundational work, subsequent replications, and the specific implications of Romania's rapid shift toward contactless payment infrastructure.
- Cash vs card and the pain of paying
- Contactless payment and coupling reduction
- BNPL services and temporal decoupling
The Decision Intervention Series
This series examines documented interventions that shift decision-making from automatic to reflective processing. Pause effects, implementation intentions, pre-commitment strategies, and environmental design changes. The research basis for each is presented. This series is descriptive. It explains what interventions do, not whether you should use them.
- The pause effect in online purchasing
- Implementation intentions and pre-commitment
- Friction design and System 2 activation
- Default effects and opt-out architecture
How we decide what to include and what to leave out.
Sources we use
Peer-reviewed papers published in academic journals. Replicated findings that have survived methodological scrutiny. Books by researchers who are also the authors of the original studies. Where we cite a popular account of research, we trace it back to the primary source and note any discrepancy.
We prefer studies with large samples and pre-registered hypotheses where they exist. We note when a finding comes from a single study, a lab setting, or a population that may not generalise to Romanian retail contexts.
What we do not include
Anecdotes presented as evidence. Popular psychology claims without a research foundation. Studies that have not survived replication when the replication failure is documented. Claims extrapolated far beyond what the original study actually measured.
We also do not include personal finance advice dressed as research. The distinction matters. Research describes what happens under studied conditions. Advice tells you what to do. We do the first. We do not do the second.