Now, here’s a strange but true story that intrigued us, and we think it will intrigue you too because it is counter-intuitive 🙂

 

In this day of reviews and constant comments online, you won’t be surprised to know that lots and lots of research goes into this field nowadays. One of the leaders in this field is Professor Sarah Moore, who practices her craft at the University of Alberta in the USA, and she has found something we want to share with you.

 

In simple terms, you can summaries the word-of-mouth (WOM) research she conducted as showing something strange: it’s that the more you know about something, the less you will like it! Odd, right?

 

The logic is that many years of research in the field show that when humans recommend a place, an experience, a venue, or a thing, we like it less after we explain to someone else why we like it. Ignorance really is bliss, after all :-) But why?

 

So when the emotion of liking something is expressed, we internally build a sort of mental scaffolding of understanding that has a knock-on effect in making us overanalyse the reasoning and turn an emotive response into a cognitive response. That apparently is bad for us because by doing that scaffolding building, we enjoy things less.  We remove the joy of the emotion.  Critics can’t enjoy the humour in a film because they are bugged by the camera angles is one way of looking at it.

 

This apparently also works in reverse—if we have a negative experience and analyse and explain why it was bad, we do that cognitive thing again, and the negative experience seems less important and, therefore, less negative. 

 

But back to the positive reviews and recommendations again as that is what we were interested in here at Wagstaff Farm HQ.  The basic idea is that recommendations and reviews should not be thought about too deeply - enjoy it for what it is and don’t make it cognitive. Knowing the secret ingredient in a favourite dish at a restaurant or the internal workings of that clever machine ruins the very enjoyment of the very thing itself.  The mystique needs to be maintained; otherwise, you will enjoy it less.  Let the magic of something not spoil your enjoyment overall.

 

So, how does this relate to watchmaking in the modern day? Well, the watchmaking industry is basically an industry obsessed with details, calibres, movement numbers, frequencies, metal definitions, production standards, diameters, and intricacies. Somewhere, it seems that in knowing all this, the very enjoyment of the watches is lost in complex details, which you simply don’t need to know.

 

Therefore, what is important in the world of watches is who bought you that watch, what that watch represents or where you got that timepiece and not the minutia of the details of the product.  So here at Wagstaff Farm, we intend to adapt a little to this with changes to our product plans and designs - by doing things like removing the logo from case backs so you can have your watch engraved - like gift watches always used to do. We plan to stop boring people with the details and focus on the experience of owning a Wagstaff timekeeper.  Only time will tell whether we are right or not (see what we did there! 🙂 )

 

We love watches, and we want our users to love them, too. We will endeavour to make them enjoyable products to own, not merely technical specs that only attract uber-fans. Many people hate quartz models, for example, and a level of insufferable snobbery goes on around some watch types and styles, but if you like the design, go for it - if you want a quartz because it less faff then get one — the mechanism isn’t always the most important thing about a watch. Every movement has a place.  We joke at Wagstaff Farm a lot about the fact that if your world comes down to accuracy to the second (and your not a race driver or an Olympic athlete) then change your life…being close and reliable is better.

 

Likewise, we want to get back to the joy of watch ownership, the passion they bring out in people, and the desire they create. We will design watches that do that for some, not all. We won’t lose sight of the fun watches should bring about in people. We won’t let you lose the love of the magic of the watch craft by bringing you stories, messages, and refreshing information, not just product specs and outlines.

 

We encourage our customers, and hundreds have already done this, to send us pictures of where they take their watches because we like to see where Wagstaffs have been worldwide. We have had them from nearly every continent and many, many countries, including Everest and from California to Australia and New Zealand, from all over Europe and North and South America - and we love receiving the pics and seeing how worldwide our watches have genuinely gone.  We want more it makes making a watch loads more fun so when you go anywhere tell us we really to want to know.

 

Stay with us and love the Watches the way we do, and don’t tell everyone why you love us; just love us and let others find us.  They will find us in time and love us in their own time. :-)  There is no rush time is infinite right?