The "happy end" effect: colonoscopies provide clues on enhancing marketing training

With many activities, even unlikely ones such as colonoscopies, it appears that ending procedures are important and affect evaluation of the entire experience. This has been dubbed the "happy end" effect. Training specialists, while acknowledging the importance of endings (e.g., seminar closures, class conclusions, and workshop completions), often place greater emphasis on openers, icebreakers, and starters. A sample of trade publications in the training and development field, as well as professional publications was reviewed. It was found that such resources had significantly higher numbers of articles/exercises and pages devoted to beginning activities than to closings. A number of suggestions are offered on how closing activities could be better incorporated into training and development programs to improve them.