The Last Mile

"The Last Mile is an engaging, sophisticated, and practical overview of how behavioral science can be applied to business, retail, and government. It skillfully weaves together findings from Soman's own considerable and inventive research, with the punchy teaching style of an experienced business school professor. I've no doubt it will be a must-read for students in business schools across the world, and for anyone who wants to understand why, if they don't get the last mile right, their grand strategies will fail." -- David Halpern, Chief Executive, The Behavioural Insights Team "Dilip Soman teaches a course called Behavioral Economics in Action, which could also be the title for this book. The keywords being 'in action.' The writing is dynamic and fast paced. The insights are both important and fascinating. And all of it is " -- Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Economics, Harvard University "There are many reasons why businesses succeed. But there is one quality which all highly successful businesses share: they have all cracked the last mile. Many otherwise admirable businesses - and government programs - have failed simply because they have overlooked this. It is a topic which has been neglected for far too long, and this wonderful book is years overdue." -- R.H. Sutherland, Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Group UK "The Last Mile covers many areas in social psychology, judgement, and decision making, and it does so in a way that is easy to understand but never trivial. The scholarship here is absolutely top-notch." -- Simona Botti, Assistant Professor of Marketing, London Business School

The Last Mile helps lay readers not only to understand behavioral science, but to apply its lessons to their own organizations’ last mile problems, whether they work in business, government, or the nonprofit sector.

Most organizations spend much of their effort on the start of the value creation process: namely, creating a strategy, developing new products or services, and analyzing the market. They pay a lot less attention to the end: the crucial “last mile” where consumers come to their website, store, or sales representatives and make a choice.

In The Last Mile, Dilip Soman shows how to use insights from behavioral science in order to close that gap. Beginning with an introduction to the last mile problem and the concept of choice architecture, the book takes a deep dive into the psychology of choice, money, and time. It explains how to construct behavioral experiments and understand the data on preferences that they provide. Finally, it provides a range of practical tools with which to overcome common last mile difficulties.

The Last Mile helps lay readers not only to understand behavioral science, but to apply its lessons to their own organizations’ last mile problems, whether they work in business, government, or the nonprofit sector. Appealing to anyone who was fascinated by Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge, or Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow but was not sure how those insights could be practically applied, The Last Mile is full of solid, concrete advice on how to put the lessons of behavioral science to work.