Endowed Progress — the research, and how to use it at events

The research, plainly

Nunes and Drèze ran the famous car-wash study: a 10-stamp loyalty card with 2 stamps pre-filled beat an 8-stamp empty card — same distance to the reward, nearly double the completion. Feeling underway is fuel.

The receipt: Nunes & Drèze, 2006

What it means for events

Never start attendees at zero. Pre-stamp the first step: registration counts as step one, the profile is pre-filled, the journey map arrives with the first box checked. Momentum can be manufactured before any real progress exists.

Where to run it

Event journeys

'You've completed 2 of 6 steps' at check-in — arrival and registration count. Watch completion climb.

Certification & training

Credit the pre-work. Learners who start at 20% finish; learners who start at 0% stall.

Sales follow-through

'We've already done the discovery and the demo — two of the five steps to a pilot are behind us.'

Seen in the wild

The pre-stamped card became loyalty-program orthodoxy across coffee shops and airlines because Nunes and Drèze's result kept replicating at the register: given a head start, humans finish the race.

Related concepts

IKEA EffectPeople love what they helped build far more than what they were handed.Implementation Intentions'I'll do it' fails. 'I'll do it Tuesday at 9, at my desk' works.The Question–Behavior EffectJust asking people whether they'll do something makes them more likely to do it.

All 115 concepts in the Library →

Now use it

Score your own event against principles like this one — or make the whole vocabulary official.

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