Mark Goulston Quotes

I'm an incompetent consumer. I have two settings: Buy and Don't Buy.

It takes me a long time to make a big purchase.

The first thing we looked at, in what case were people more likely to be attracted to the jar or jam, so in which case are people more likely to stop when they saw the display of jams and what we found was that more people stopped when there were 24 jams.

Business wise, I have always learned valuable lessons so I don't regret any decisions I have made.

I am a compulsive and concise shopper.

I've been making products for so long, I have a gut feel for what is right - what will work and what won't. I can tell instantly if it's a hero or a zero.

I don't want to tell you what to buy. I just want to help you think about why you're buying it.

I would not advise people to buy a car or house without making a list. You will probably improve your intuitions by making a list and then sleeping on it.

If I could get a deal on whatever my impulse was, whenever my impulse struck, and it was nearby, I would use that all the time. It would reshape the way that I shop.

When companies try to guess what consumers want, they essentially make the choice for consumers.

The fundamental work of investment management is filtering. The question is what do you filter.

People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy.

As long as gas is cheaper than bottled water, we can't be in a position of dictating to the consumer what to buy.

You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.

The real challenge in this line of work is being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to decide which you're going to spend the next six to nine months turning into something that people will pay for.

But if people are buying the products, naturally they're gonna use them.

There are millions and millions of products out there. You can look at eBay and Amazon. You can look at every product on the planet, but trying to figure out which one is best for you is really the challenge.

Before acquiring a project, take the advice of experienced trade pundits in the industry and analyse the risks and business propositions thoroughly.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.

As a whole, when it comes to business in general, whether it's buying a building or contract negotiations or whatever it is, you have to take emotions out of it. That's what people forget.

To study consumer behavior is to explore human nature at its most fundamental level using the modern world as its backdrop.

It is widely accepted and understood that consumer decisions are as much influenced by emotional attachments to a product or service as by factors like price and performance. So why is it that when it comes to most aspects of human transportation, the world still seems to believe people are rational machines?

If you do something really cognitively demanding, like buying furniture, it turns out buying furniture is one of the most difficult things we do. Go into a furniture store and look at a sofa.

It's the business that you guys are in too. We try to get as much information as we can and make the best decisions that we can for the football team.

What I've found is there is no barometer that allows you to chart when you're oversaturating a desire. You're left really trying to respond on a gut level, because by the time you might do research, it's already too late. There's also a healthy tension between what are very sound business objectives and a very amorphous desire to preserve what's special.