What is a Nudge and Why it is Important

What is a nudge?
A nudge is influencing a consumer's behavior by several factors that specifically have to do with external intervention. To break it down Nudges are:
iNcentives
Understand mappings
Defaults
Give feedback
Expect Error
Structure complex ideas

Why is it important?
To the average individual these are things that go over your head on a day to day basis. One does not necessarily obviously face a nudge because they are seen as just a part of the make-up of things. Such as this super market.

In your day to day action this seems just like a basic set up of a grocery store, however when you look at the data it is far from it. Although it is hard to tell a majority of fresh/healthy goods are positioned right at the entrance of the store. Data says the inherently you will choose products that are actually better for you. Therefore the individual can actually become to understand why the deserts and frozen food is actually as far away as possible from the entrance. Nudges are important cause it helps us explain why we make the decisions we do when shopping or enacting in an activity. 

Another such example of a perfect nudge would be the fly on the toilet. A company called Unirnal Fly created a product on the basis of a nudge. The idea was if you give an individuals a target they would be more likely to 'shoot' at it.

When studies were conducted they actually discovered that bathrooms with the fake fly sticker in the toilet actually were around 80-85% cleaner than ones that did not. An individuals intuition to aim for the fly actually reduced spill, but in reality it was just a nudge to get them to aim.