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Reader question: How to understand this: “Smartphone buyers are influenced by herd mentality.” My comments: In other words, people buy the same smartphones other people buy. Herd mentality has the same meaning with “herb instinct”, a phrase I wrote about before, a phrase that depicts the animal behavior of crowding together in times of danger – or, in fact, peacetime also. “Herd” is the word for any large group of animals living together – any animals, cattle, sheep, whatever. And in any such herds, a common scene is observable: The animals crowd together both when they feed and when they are running away from predators. Animals don’t think much – not much as humans do, supposedly – and what they do they do out of instinct, nature or sheer habit. If a few sheep begin to feed on a fresh pasture, other sheep soon join them – the rationale being (even if animals don’t seem to spend a lot of time rationalizing): Something has drawn the leaders over there. So therefore, whatever the leaders do, the rest of the group do, too. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say. True. Humans act in the same way. If they see people gather, they think: These guys must be on to something and so let me find out. Hence they congregate. In shopping, the same rationale works: If they are all buying this brand of smartphone, then it must be good. Therefore I must buy one of these too. | 
