There’s a selfish little consumer behaviour researchers have finally given a name to.

Tell me if you’ve experienced something like this.

Near where I live, there’s a new Mexican restaurant with fantastic food and almost absurdly good value.

I occasionally write restaurant reviews, so normally I’d be happy to tell people about it.

Except I caught myself thinking: maybe I shouldn’t.

What if it gets crowded, and then the prices shoot up? What if my family can’t waltz in and get a table anymore?

Lovely instinct, right? Very generous to the owners.

A new study in the International Journal of Research in Marketing calls this kind of behaviour knowledge shading: the middle ground between openly sharing useful information and hiding it completely.

Researchers studied fishers who often face the same dilemma with good fishin’ spots.

Share too much, and the very thing you value can get harder to enjoy.

They found six ways people shade knowledge, including generalizing, withholding, misdirecting and selectively sharing with certain audiences.

That extends way beyond fishing.

Could be a quiet, clean beach. That great, pristine campground. A little-known ski run, OR even a spectacularly cheap but good restaurant.

Customers are usually assumed to spread good experiences because satisfaction creates advocacy.

But satisfaction can also create protectiveness.

Here’s the trick for businesses: 

ASK.

That restaurant’s owner is a really cool guy. If he’d asked me to write a review because it would help the business, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Same day.

A request changes the equation.

Now I’m helping someone I like rather than taking time out to make my own favourite place harder to get into, louder, more competitive for service, and maybe more expensive.

Great customer experiences create potential advocates.

A small, personal invitation can be what effectively turns them into one.

I guess I owe this guy a review, eh?

If you’d like help creating and marketing products people feel compelled to buy, the product marketing consultants at Graphos Product can help.