What animals teach us about customer relations

Scientists and philosophers have spent a lot of their time and energy trying to describe what makes humans different from animals. So have economists.

Blue-striped cleaner wrasses at work. Photo by Gregory R. Mann
But it turns out that animals have economic market behaviors similar to humans, such as customer differentiation (a fish called the cleaner wrasse) and bidding out their labor (the paper wasp).

For this blog post I am indebted to Stephen J. Dubner's "The Invisible Paw" podcast. He interviewed a scientist who described how the cleaner wrasse, which removes parasites and dead scales from other fish, treats its "clients" in line with the principles of market economics. (Photo is from the WildCoastBlog).


Read more �

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wesley Weber � Canada�s Master Counterfeiter

Wesley Weber who was one of the world�s most famous counterfeiters (forging millions of bank notes) is arguably the first image that comes to mind when counterfeiting is being discussed. From the start, Wesley Weber�s goal was to live the good life�fast cars, beautiful women, lavish parties. But that took money, lots of it. He tried financing his dreams with a series of petty thefts, growing marijuana, and forgery until he was busted in 1997 and spent three months in jail. Two years later his marijuana operation netted 18 months of house arrest and 240 hours of community service. Weber needed a better way to subsidize his ambitions. Then it hit him. Why not print his own money? Putting Technology to Work Weber had always been a computer geek. As a kid, he�d tried duplicating Canadian 10s and 20s but decided doing it on a large scale wouldn�t be practical with the equipment he had. After several years of science and engineering classes, he thought it was worth another try. He scanned an...
Read more