BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS

-RAHUL BAID (1533348)

Behavioural economics is the study of different forces of psychological, emotional, social and
cognitive factors that affect an economic decision of a consumer. It explains us the consumer choices
and the factors those affect the consumer decisions. It is mainly focused on observations of a
consumer and is highly dynamic in nature.

So as the part of the assignment I had observed the behaviour of consumers in Bluo- a bowling
centre in Orion mall. Bluo is considered to be one of the finest bowling centres in the country with
30 bowling lanes with the smoothest ones and with a very good music. It is said to be crowded most
of the times.

I had decided to be there for at least 45 minutes every day for one week and see about how the
consumers would behave when the price changes, when they win and after they lose and also how
people tend to lose their interest when they come continuously for a long period of time. The first
observation that I could make was that this place was comparatively more crowded on Wednesdays
and Saturdays. Wednesdays is usually more crowded because of the lower rates, and on Saturday it
is filled with people because Saturday is the day when people want to relax and be stress free. No
doubt Bluo is a place with the brilliant atmosphere that can calm people down and make them feel
relaxed. Hence this place is crowded the most on these two days. This is because of the changes in
price that makes the demand go up and down and also the day when people are free. One more
thing that I observed was that people tend to play more if they win or they feel they are challenged.
The interest here rises because of the happiness of winning or the hope to win in later matches.
There is this incentive of winning and becoming superior in the eyes of the others which forces them
to play more. Also there are people who stop playing once they start losing badly because their
confidence goes down. Also they lose interest in playing that day because they feel that wasting
more money on it is useless. Also it makes them unhappy that they couldn’t win and they feel
inferior to their challengers. So one thing that can be observed was that the feeling of happiness can
make people interested towards certain things and the unpleasant feelings can make consumers
lose their interest.

People usually came here with a group of friends and they sat together and talked. Most of the
people here were of the age group of 15-30 and were either early workers or students. Such places
are usually filled with a group of friends because going with friends to such places can increase the
competition and would become more enjoyable. Also one thing was that people enjoyed coming to
these places only after 5 P.M because they finish all the other works by then.

A very important thing that I noticed was that there was a group of friends who almost went to this
playing arena every day. But one day they didn’t go to Bluo and instead preferred choosing Time
zone (another gaming arena in Orion). On asking them about why they didn’t go to Bluo that day,
they told me that they had got bored of the same game daily and wanted a change. And hence they
preferred going to Time zone. This shows that their utility for bowling had decreased because of
regular visit and proves the law of diminishing marginal utility correct. It proves how people tend to
lose interest in things that they usually do and want a change. They wanted a break and wanted to
do something different.

One more thing that I observed there was that how a consumer on having a small argument with
one of the worker there left the playing alley in anger and later asked people not to go there
because of the bad behaviour of the employees. He tried influencing others decisions and bring a
change in their attitude about the bowling alley.

So these were the few things that I had observed. It included about how a consumer makes choices
and what determines these choices. It tells us about how when the marginal utility about a certain
product decreases and how one cannot take up things after a certain period of time. It tells us about
consumer decisions. It tells us about how an incentive gives rise to interest and how things going
against one can make them feel bad. It tells about the behaviour of consumer and how outside
factors can change the consumers’ decision making activity. Here this could be seen by how the
price changed the demand of consumers. Also we could see how there was a change in attitude and
thinking process of consumers because of bad comments by someone else. This shows that how
human behaviour can be manipulated.

These were few of the observations that I had made after going to Bluo for a week and staying there
for almost 4-5 hours.