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Keeping Current
look at relationships to co-workers,
friends and social network members
as replaceable.”
Are Your Relationships
Disposable?
In a highly mobile world, it’s easy not
to get attached to things. Apparently,
that includes friendships and other
close relationships. According to a new
study from the University of Kansas, the
mindset that objects are disposable
extends to social ties.
In a series of four studies, subjects
online and on university campuses
completed questionnaires measuring
their willingness to dispose of objects
or relationship partners. Other subjects
were prompted to imagine scenarios
that involved relocating.
Even though moving can have positive
aspects, such as a better job or
education, Gillath warned that it can also
have negative implications on the overall
quality of people’s lives and our society.
“Research suggests only deeper
high-quality ties provide us with the
kind of support we need, like love,
understanding and respect,” Gillath said.
“You need these very close ties to feel
safe and secure and function properly.
If social ties are seen as disposable,
you’re less likely to get what you need
from your network, which can negatively
affect your mental and physical health
as well as your longevity.”
As a coach, consider your client’s
mobility if they don’t seem happy
or healthy. If your client is a highly
mobile individual, they may need to
pay more attention to their mindset
and put more effort into maintaining
meaningful relationships.
The study will appear in the journal
Personal Relationships.
The studies found that:
• Moving positively related to the
development of a disposable
attitude toward possessions.
Shutterstock.com/Singkham
• Increasing the sense of residential
mobility boosts a person’s
willingness to dispose of both
objects and relationships.
6
Coaching World
Lead author Omri Gillath, associate
professor of psychology at the
University of Kansas, said that relational
disposability promotes superficiality
over deeper human relationships.
“If you know you’re moving and
develop the idea that everything can
be replaced, you won’t develop the
same strong and deep ties,” Gillath
said. “We’re suggesting this is a broad
phenomenon where we all tend to
It Pays to Determine
Clients' Price
Sensitivity
Negotiating agreements with
coaching clients that include certain
services and fees can be challenging.
A study from Germany’s University
of Bochum investigated the ability
Price sensitivity is the degree to
which the price of a product affects
consumers’ purchasing behaviors.
The degree of price sensitivity varies
from product to product and from
consumer to consumer. For coaches,
this translates to your services and your
varied clients.
In the study of more than 500 carbuying transactions, researchers from
the sales and marketing departments
of the university determined that it
is challenging to correctly perceive
customers’ prices se nsitivity. Often,
customer cues are misinterpreted.
For example, if a customer had a
particularly high level of knowledge
about the car they intended to buy, the
salespeople initially believed they would
be difficult to deal with. In reality, there
was not a correlation. Perceptions,
such as age of the customer, also
proved challenging to overlook when
determining the importance of price.
The researchers concluded that sales
personnel who have been specifically
trained to understand a customer’s
price sensitivity are often able to
negotiate a deal that not only brings in
more money for their employer, but is
better for the customer as well.
—Lisa Cunningham
• People who move a lot tend to
transfer this disposable attitude to
close social ties. The researchers
named this phenomenon
“relational disposability.”
of car salespeople to determine
the price sensitivity for individual
customers and how that related to
the final sales agreement.
The study was published in March 2016
in the Journal of Retailing.
As a coach, this means being willing
to adapt your fees and services to
individual clients as dictated by what
they value. If you are successful, you will
not only be able to negotiate acceptable
fees for yourself, but also be better able
to address your clients’ needs and offer
them services that correspond to their
price sensitivity.
One strategy to decrease price
sensitivity is to communicate the end
value of your services to your clients
relative to their cost. Another is to
communicate the unique value of
your services or expertise relative to
available resources.
—Michael Voss