What looks like attention from the outside is usually something simpler from the inside: tiredness, a deadline, a wish not to look foolish. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the loyalty card, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. In the studies we have, the effect is modest, reliable and almost entirely ignored by the people it describes.
What the evidence shows
None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. The strange thing about the loyalty card is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. Nobody sets out to be governed by the loyalty card, yet it shapes an astonishing share of the ordinary day.
