Behavioral Modification Experiments (on customers)
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
There is this one woman in Springfield who has been buying our kettle corn all summer long. I’ve always called her the colorful lady because she only wears bright, colorful clothing and has sections of her hair colored with big chunks of bright color. You would think I’m talking about an 18 year old, but I would put her around Velma’s age. At this point, I have no idea what her name is.
I’ve started to compliment her about her funky choice in colors and I’ve looked forward to seeing this one person arrive each Tuesday. I’ve learned that she’s a creative type person and she’s very sharp and “with it”. On day she even had her daughter with her and SHE had chunks of color in her hair. The joke as told: she inherited her mothers hair color. (Bright pink)
As I’ve gotten to know her over the summer I’ve decided to push my boundaries a little and started to “taunt” her that if she REALLY was a colorful person, she’d wear something Day-Glo for me and I would reward her with a free bag of kettle corn. She found this intriguing and seemed up to the challenge.
Over the course of a few weeks, she never arrived with any day glow and I expressed my disappointment. She said she thought she had something with Day-Glo (not just a trinket or scarf, but either a full top or bottom) but couldn’t come up with the goods at this time. I then gave her another challenge: how about if you wear ALL BLACK one day? This would be completely opposite of what she normally does and it may even disrupt the “fabric” of things around the market. She thought that it might be too cliché for an artsy person like herself to wear around town. I dared her again and pulled out the big guns: 3 FREE LARGE BAGSS OF KETTLE CORN if she does.
Next week arrives; she did it! We had a laugh and I said that she shall now be know as “the lady in black” (even when wearing a polka dot dress). 
She agreed that by getting kettle corn for wearing black, she fell into a Pavlovian experiment where she will now associate a yummy and content feeling with the color black. From now on, she may actually salivate when she thinks of a little black dress. All these conflicting feelings when she now looks at her colorful wardrobe! I find this pretty cool that I can now influence people with my sinister tools of power…large bags of kettle corn! [insert evil laughter here]
