Schieber Research: Trends, Innovations, Marketing, Strategy

09/08/2026

Choice overload isn’t solved only by offering less. The better opportunity is intelligent curation: helping people move from overwhelm to confidence without flattening discovery.

Read The Curation Correction:

For two decades, most business advice about the paradox of choice has pointed in one direction: offer less. The famous jam study showed 24 varieties = 3% conversion, 6 varieties = 30% conversion. The lesson seemed clear. Trader Joe’s…

09/07/2026

The same campaign can make one customer feel seen and another feel threatened. Winning brands treat emotional triggers as design inputs—not landmines to tiptoe around.

Read Trigger Alert:

How the brands winning Gen Z loyalty treat emotional triggers as design inputs — not landmines. Here’s something most marketers know but rarely say out loud: the same campaign that makes one customer feel seen will make another feel…

09/04/2026

Emotion earns attention—but only when people remember who created it. The strongest advertising connects laughter, tears and surprise to distinctive brand memory.

Read Make Them Laugh, Make Them Cry:

What This Sunday’s $7M Super Bowl Ads Reveal About Your Brand Every February, brands now spend around $7–8 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Most treat it as a gamble. Smart strategists treat it as the world’s largest live experiment…

09/03/2026

Joy grows when it is shared. Collective experiences create belonging, memory and emotional intensity that solitary convenience cannot replicate—and that has measurable value for brands.

Read Joy Shared Is Joy Multiplied:

I was one of those 1.1 million people. On New Year’s Eve 2025, I sat in a packed theater watching the Stranger Things finale. I was clapping during the big reveals, gasping at the scary parts, and shouting at the screen during the final…

09/02/2026

When did “good enough, but effortless” begin to beat “excellent, but requires something of you”? Convenience can remove the very effort that makes quality visible and experiences memorable.

Read When Convenience Killed Quality: https://researchci.com/when-convenience-killed-quality/

09/01/2026

Not all friction is failure. Some effort creates anticipation, ownership, memory and meaning. The strategic question is not simply how to remove friction—but which friction is carrying value.

Read When Friction Becomes the Feature:

About a month ago, I wrote about the good kind of stress — the neuroscience of why hard things stick, why IKEA furniture you assemble yourself feels more valuable than identical pre-built pieces, and why Trader Joe’s legendary parking…

08/31/2026

What do 21 CAGNY presentations reveal about the next era of CPG growth? Seven strategic shifts—from attention as distribution to the Joy Dividend—plus a practical scorecard for brand teams.

Explore CAGNY 2026: CPG Trends: https://researchci.com/cagny-2026-food-beverage-trends/

08/28/2026

Best Buy didn’t beat Amazon by hiding the price comparison. It handed customers the calculator—and removed the anxiety at the heart of the experience. A case for calm first, joy second.

Read the analysis:

Best Buy’s turnaround shows why brands should remove the customer’s core anxiety before investing in delight: calm first, joy second.

08/27/2026

What if the thing we should optimize isn’t performance—but how people feel? The over-optimization backlash is moving consumers away from constant measurement and toward meaning, calm and joy.

Read Optimizing for Joy:

The over-optimization backlash is not a retreat from progress. It is a shift toward designing brands, products and experiences around the emotional outcomes that compound.

08/26/2026

GLP-1s are reshaping far more than food choices. Our new report traces the transition across beauty, fitness, travel, fashion and identity—and shows what brands should prepare for next.

Read the full report:

The most important GLP-1 story may not be what people stop eating. It may be what happens after the body changes.