Reserve Brand Nicknames for Consumer Use

BMW becomes Beamer. Rolex becomes Rollie. Christian Louboutin becomes Loubi. 

     Consumers might enjoy using a nickname to refer to your store or product. This does not mean you should use that nickname in your marketing to prospective customers. A team of researchers from Western University, Stockton University, and University of Massachusetts warns that if, for example, Bloomingdale’s were to refer to themselves as Bloomie’s in their ads, the customer-conceived moniker could compromise Bloomingdale’s ability to charge premium prices.
     The researchers show that when a brand blatantly co-opts a nickname created by its customers, the brand yields some authority over the consumer, and this dilutes the power of the brand in the eyes of consumers. In the studies, participants were less receptive to a price premium when Beemer was used for a BMW, expressed less interest in purchasing a Rolex when the nickname Rollie was used, and moved toward other luxury brands when Loubi was used in place of Christian Louboutin.
     This effect held for non-luxury brands, too. Use of Chevy rather than Chevrolet reduced social media marketing likes and shares. Tarzhay got fewer click-throughs than Target. Purchase intentions were lower for Wally World than for Walmart.
     I’ll add to the researchers’ argument the idea that brand authority is compromised when, as is common, nicknames conceived by consumers are cute modifications of the actual name. The diminutives can imply the consumer’s dealing with a child who lacks the power of a mature adult.
     Exceptions to the diminutive formatting are nicknames conceived by consumers to ridicule the brand, and there’s little need for a marketer to be cautioned against co-opting those. Starbucks is unlikely to refer to themselves as Fourbucks or Neiman Marcus to advertise “Just call us Needless Markup.”
     Because the cautions are based on the value of a brand’s portrayal of power, the researchers hypothesized that the cautions would hold less strongly when the brand succeeds by emphasizing warmth over competence or when the marketing campaign touts how the brand’s doing a social good. These hypotheses were validated in a study using the name versus nickname of a fictitious charity and in a study using the marketing message “[Starbucks/Starbies] supports the disability community. It is an inclusive space at [Starbucks/Starbies].”
     The most important add-on to the general finding, though, is that nicknames for brands and items created by consumers are good for business when being used by the consumers.

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Combine Competence with Warmth 

Spark Nicknames in the Name of Love

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Fizz Fizz to Generate Effectiveness Perception

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is,” the jingle hitting the airwaves in 1975 has been credited with doubling sales of sponsor Alka-Seltzer. The visual accompanying the jingle showed tablets of the antacid, which had been tossed into a glass of water, bubbling away as evidence of beneficial action.
     The effervescence occurred outside the body, before the bubbles were swallowed. Researchers at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Université Laval, and University of Massachusetts find sensations experienced on or in the body also can convince the consumer of product effectiveness. In analyzing results from a survey project, they concluded that fizzing, tingling, cooling, or heating sensations during usage improve product ratings.
     In one of their studies, participants read an ad which stated, “Introducing HerbLife Balm. Our yellow balm is made from herbs such as turmeric and prai. To use the product, rub and massage a small amount on the affected area. This balm improves your physical performance.” The participants were then instructed to apply the balm to their arm. For some of the participants, the balm had been formulated to produce a tingling sensation shortly after application. For the other participants, the balm formulation was identical except that the ingredient producing tingling was omitted.
     Those participants experiencing the tingles were more likely to accept an offer to actually purchase the product at the conclusion of the session.
     Another in the set of studies found that people using a tingle-producing gel claiming to improve physical performance actually did improve their dumbbell lifting performance to a greater extent than an equivalent group of people using the same gel lacking the sensation-producing ingredient. The researchers’ explanation is that the sensory signaling generated a perception that the gel was transferring benefits to the body, which in itself energized the body to perform better. It’s of note that the gel used in this study contained no ingredients which had been shown to independently improve physical performance.
     The implications of these results apply most clearly to what consumer researchers call credence products. These are items where the evidence of effectiveness is not obviously clear to the user. A hammer is not a credence product. Pain-relieving balms, performance-enhancing gels, antacids, vitamin supplements, vaccines, and the like are credence products. Manufacturers could benefit by adding to their credence products an ingredient which generates a stimulating sensation. Marketers could benefit by featuring sensation-producing credence products.

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Talk to Multiple Senses with New Products 

Confirm Self-Service Transactions Soundly 

Post Dramatic Tales for Post-Experience Goods

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Investigate Insulting’s Populist Persuasiveness

Although there’s past evidence people generally dislike incivility, politicians who lob cutting insults at their opponents are winning elections. Populism may be central to unraveling this paradox, according to researchers at University of Lausanne, University of Amsterdam, and University of Bern.
     The distinguishing view in populist sentiments is that society is divided into the common people, who are generally virtuous, and the elite, who generally intend to exploit the common people. The common people must continually be on guard that their welfare is not ravaged by the elite. Incivility serves as a way to challenge the norms of the elites, demand attention, and express frustration. With this in mind, the researchers hypothesized that uncivility toward the opposition, such as obscene insults, will help persuade people who are high in populist attitudes.
     To test this hypothesis, a group of U.S. consumers was recruited for a study. About 44% self-identified as Democrats, 27% as Republicans, 24% as Independent, and the remainder as none of those three designations.
     The study participants were administered an inventory to measure their degree of agreement with populist views. They also were asked their opinion on the topic of requiring parental consent for gender transition in teens, then presented arguments either for or against, and again asked their opinion. For some of the respondents, the arguments had been presented with a courteous view of the opposition (“I know some might disagree” or “I can respect that some people may think differently”). For the remaining respondents, the view of the opposition was designed to be rude (“I don't care what other people think. It’s fucking obvious” or “Every other opinion is just bullshit”). The degree of attitude change about the parental consent topic was calculated.
     As the researchers predicted, respondents reflecting populist views were persuaded to a greater extent by the arguments when those arguments were accompanied by rude statements about the opposition.
     However, the pattern of findings was different in a parallel study conducted with respondents in Switzerland, a culture which, compared to the U.S., leans more toward consensus than polarization. In Switzerland, there was no evidence that incivility was more persuasive than civility among people with strong populist attitudes. Indeed, it appeared the rude messages backfired when the message aligned with the Swiss respondent’s initial view—that is, a higher rejection of the supporting arguments.
     In applying these findings, then, attend to cultural differences in consensus-polarization.

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Persuade Populists 

Damn Positive Item Reviews 

Constrain Politician Parodies to Controllables 

Endorse Policy, Not Character, Political Attacks 

Praise Your Brand Competitors

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Raise Referral Success Via Bigger Devices

Any organization experiencing customer turnover benefits from having current recipients of products or services personally suggest to others that they also give their business to the organization. And every organization experiences customer turnover.
     Solicit referrals to both strong and weak links: “Please recommend us to your colleagues, and recommend those colleagues talk about us to their colleagues.”
     Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg conclude that when you ask a current customer to make a referral, you also encourage them to use a laptop or personal computer, rather than a smartphone, to compose and send the request to each referred individual. That’s because referrals made via smartphone tend to be shorter and contain less positive content than those made on the larger devices, but longer, more positive recommendations stimulate better follow-through by the referral recipient.
     Those inferior characteristics of smartphone-based messaging can be attributed to how the small size of the screen and keyboard on the device make it more challenging to compose the referral. At the same time, the portability and ubiquity of smartphones could easily result in a greater number of referral messages sent out in response to your request than if the referring customer waits to do it on a laptop or PC. In accord with this, another of the researchers’ recommendations is to make it as easy as possible for a referral message to be completed on a smartphone. Auto-completion and pre-formulated text modules help here. Actually, these also could be helpful for composing a referral on a laptop or PC.
     Studies at City University of New York and Pennsylvania State University indicate that what you’d best include in any pre-formatted text modules depends on the degree of familiarity the recipient of the referral message currently has with the proposed supplier. If they’ve had few if any dealings with the organization previously, the best text should be thoroughly positive. This relaxes perceptions of risk generated by the prospect of transacting with an unknown.
     But if the recommended supplier is already well-known to the referral message recipient, text which qualifies the referrer’s expertise in making the recommendation is more important than whether the proposed supplier is described as flawless. In addition, researchers at Italy’s LUISS University and University of Bari suggest that in this latter situation, the text be more abstract than concrete, describing general upsides and concerns in doing business with the supplier rather than giving detailed examples.

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Minimize Customer Turnover 

Cultivate Referred Customers 

Wise Up by Tapping Smartphones 

Open Wide to Calm Complaint Intensity 

Slant Referral Rewards Toward the Referred

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Explain Algorithms to Affected Individuals

Convincing a consumer to accept an AI-based unfavorable decision about them requires establishing trust in the algorithm by describing why the AI tool made the decision. To address this demand, organizations can provide, along with a decision, an explanation of how the machine logic reached its conclusion.
     Researchers at University of Calgary and Mount Royal University were interested in what characterizes the best of such post-hoc explanations. Their studies established that ones which include concrete, feasible steps the consumer can take to positively influence future outcomes were especially effective in preserving positive attitudes toward the decision and the marketer. The researchers name them sensitivity-based explanations because they describe how much the values of specific variables would have to change in order to alter the decision outcome.
     A scenario used in the studies was for a car insurance applicant who did not receive the best rate. A sensitivity-based explanation was, “If 10% or less of your driving took place at night, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier. If your average miles per month were 700 or less, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier.”
     The positivity of study participants’ ratings of fairness and of intention to do business with the insurance company were higher than for study participants given a case-based explanation: “This decision was based on thousands of similar cases from the past. For example, a similar case to yours is a previous customer: She was 38 years old, with 18 years of driving experience, drove 850 miles per month, occasionally exceeded the speed limit, and 25% of her trips took place at night. Claire was involved in one accident in the following year.”
     The researchers are suggesting that the marketer describe the logic of the particular decision. They are not suggesting that the marketer attempt to explain the entire logic of the AI model. This latter would almost surely overwhelm the customer with details. It also might reveal the marketer’s trade secrets or allow the customer to subsequently game the algorithm.
     I’ll add to those reasons the fact that the entire logic of the AI model may be unknown to the marketer. Aside from the challenge of earning trust from the consumer, the complexity of machine learning—AI systems which learn on their own beyond the data they’re originally fed—readily results in marketers questioning whether to grant trust. Marketers want decision-making transparency, too.

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Relax Guardedness with Gricean Norms 

Scotch Faux Explanations to Explanation Foes

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Utilize Imagination of Consuming Units

Studies at Michigan State University, Baylor University, and Virginia Tech indicate that “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $16.00” will sell better than “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $15.30” at an equivalent store in another town.
     A potential explanation for this is how a $16.00 price is simpler for the consumer’s brain to process than is a $15.30 price. But the researcher’s explanation is that the multipack’s easily-divisible price of $16.00 by its quantity of four draws attention from the whole bundle to each unit in the multipack. This facilitates consumption visions, such as each $4.00 body wash being used by multiple family members or in multiple locations, situations, and times. Consequently, buying this multipack is more easily justified than buying a multipack whose price is not easily divisible by its quantity, even though $15.30 is a lower amount.
     The researchers also found this effect with multipacks of six tissue boxes, eight toothbrushes, and eleven bags of cashews.
     Divisibility and consumption visions also play a part in how customers eat from multipacks. People eat less from what’s in a big package than from what’s in a set of small packages containing the same quantity as what’s in the big package. Researchers at Technical University of Lisbon and at Tilburg University in the Netherlands found that people hesitant about eating a food were more likely to overcome their hesitations when presented with small packages than when presented the equivalent amount in a large package.
     In addition, the people who got started on the small packages ended up eating more than did those who dug into the large package. The participants said they had believed small packages would help them limit their consumption. The opposite proved to be true. When faced with an additional small package, the dieter says, “Oh, it would be only a little bit more.” The explanation has less to do with the degree to which eating from a small versus large package sates hunger.
     Still, studies at Hofstra University and Baruch College find that consuming the entire contents of a single serving package gives more of a feeling of fulfillment than consuming the equivalent amount, and therefore not the entire contents, from a multi-serving package. And it applies to medicine, not only food. Patients feel a two-pill dose has been more effective when taking them from a two-pill container than from a twelve-pill container.

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Hit Shoppers with a Two-by-Four 

Stimulate Consumption Visions with Ads 

Serve Singular Satisfaction 

Bargain for Good Value via Price Primacy

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