Before I go on, thanks Dr Lam for telling me in what board to write, I had doubts about it.
Memento, you are too kind, and you too Mr Lam. It is so hard, though, to accept such compliments, I am so not used (and it is not false modesty) to get anything but extremely rare positive feedback on my appearance.
Back to the topic of "buy*ology", this set of articles on what motivates our longing for some things reminded me of something I saw years ago... and that indirectly makes me think of the world of plastic surgery and how the buy*ology "science" applies.
One day (by pure chance) I heard a rocker, a quite famous one "up there" mention why and how he had stopped smoking.
He was candid and had a good sense of humor, because he did not mind saying that his motivation had been "pathetic" by comparison of what it "should have been". Regardless, it is an interesting one.
He said he had been touring in Europe, were anti-smoking campaigns are more aggressive, in the sense of the images they use. Cigarettes boxes come with shocking, disturbing images to raise awareness of how smoking can make people end up in awful conditions.
He said he found those images shocking, indeed, but he still bought the cigarettes. Until he read (not sure where) about all the negative side effects of smoking in "looks". He said that this was the "click" he needed and that he knew it was a reflection of his vanity and shallowness, but he did not want to lie. It was out of preserving his looks and his rocker style (that implies looking young and "cool", I guess) that he felt motivated enough to quit.
I personally drew some conclusions from it... feel free to find them "off" or make remarks on them...
a) We only make changes when we really, really get to associate that change with something positive (in this case, for this guy, preserve his looks) concerning an issue we are sensitive about (for this guy, his looks)
b) We might rationally understand why and how we should make changes in our habits, but as long as we don't relate to what ads say, we won't make the subconscious association of the habit (smoking) with bad stuff (what was shown in pics in the cigarretes' boxes) that will in turn keep us motivated enough to change. For this rocker's case, someone relatively young, those pics of people with lung cancer and kids with alarmingly low birthweight due to smoking mothers might have looked real but not like something they could identify themselves or any future situation of theirs with.
Maybe he found all of those images shocking, but "distant", as if "that can not happen to me". While "looks", well, they are not a distant thing but something we "see" every day, and noticing a faster ageing due to a bad habit seemed like a closer, more imminent danger and consequence of that habit.
So... people tend to find the motivation for a big "change" when they associate the change with obtaining something really positive and important to *them*, rather than when they think of the "bad" they should preserve themselves from. People are drawn subconsciously to whatever will bring on nice emotions and feelings (like, for this guy, feeling still young and still "hot" as a rocker) and tend to reject subconsciously a change that will imply having things "taken away" from their current sense of wellbeing.
If we applied that to the plastic surgery field, I would assume (assume!) that people will feel drawn and more positive about making changes **and less likely to go overboard with those** (keeping common sense and not end with duck lips, say) if and when they get to see a plastic surgeon that treats them as patients, not as clients (like Dr Lam). I can imagine people going to Dr Lam and ending up not just objectively improved in a particular way, but feeling better *overall*: improved, rejuvenated, "restored"... which in turn will encourage them get back to Dr Lam's, as those patients will associate being treated by him with improvement AND positive overall feelings on their appearance.
On the other hand, I imagine other people going to other plastic surgeon, of the type who thinks of patients in terms of clients, and that attend even the craziest demands, getting out of an appointment/procedure feeling like they still have a lot to fix and discouraged, even if they already fixed something. I doubt these "clients", even if their procedures turned out ok, would end up feeling really ok or better in the long run. I doubt the surgeries or procedures would be associated in their minds with doing something to improve their quality of life, but instead would be associated with fighting something they hate about their looks. It might not seem like a huge difference, but it is.
I suspect Dr Lam's services apply intuitively buy*ology principles (in a fair, good way) as he treats patients in a way that whatever he does to them, he will make them feel better about how they look ALREADY and what can be improved, which in turn must motivate patients to come back to him: first and foremost, because he is good, of course, but second, because of all the positive extras they are "buying" when seeing him.
