Self-Centeredness May Happen When You Sympathize With Others

First Posted: Feb 26, 2015 12:20 AM EST
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Sympathy is a wonderful quality, but there's a time and a place to put ourselves in another person's shoes.

In fact, new findings published in the Journal of Marketing Research even show that sometimes, it can even lead to self-centered behavior.

"Ironically, putting oneself in the customer's shoes makes managers even more likely let their own feelings get in the way," study authors Johannes D. Hattula (Imperial College London), Walter Herzog (Otto Beisheim School of Management), Darren W. Dahl (University of British Columbia), and Sven Reinecke (University of St. Gallen), wrote in the paper. "Envisioning oneself as a consumer who is making personal choices causes the manager's true personal preferences to kick in."

The findings are based on four separate studies in which marketing managers were asked to consider a particular car model from a consumer's point of view.

The study results revealed that many sales managers were significantly more likely to judge he car models from their own point of view when asked to describe how a typical consumer might feel about a model, with results based in several replicated in several experiments.

"Every day, marketers try to predict consumer preferences in order to develop new products, design advertisements, and make pricing decisions. Surprisingly, the long-established habit of putting themselves in the customers' place seems to make marketers even more vulnerable to letting their personal preferences interfere. The good news is that when marketers are aware of this fact, they are finally able to set aside their personal likes and dislikes and truly see things through a customer's eyes," researchers concluded.

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