Emphasize Possibilities, Not Probabilities

When your customers make purchase decisions, they use shortcuts. Otherwise the amount of information to process would be overwhelming. They are aiming to balance a whole set of risks, ranging from financial—“Is this price too much, too little, or just right?”—to psychological—“How well does the personality of this store and this product fit my values?”
     Psychologists at Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago who study real-world decision making point out that when it comes to weighing the risks, consumers tend to think in terms of possibilities—“How can I make this happen?” “How can I keep this from happening?”—more often than in terms of probabilities—“How likely is it that this will happen?” “How much would it cost me to make what I want twice as likely to happen?” “How much to make what I don’t want half as likely?”
     People pay much more than justified by the odds in order to gamble on a lotto ticket. “You can’t win if you don’t play!” and “Somebody has to win!” become the rationales for spending money to turn a zero possibility of gain into a very small, but better-than-zero, chance. People pay for an extended service contract on an appliance even when the probability is that the cost of repair or replacement would be less than the cost of the ESC.
     There are experts who look at this happening and conclude that shoppers are stupid. That’s wrong. Sure, our customers sometimes make foolish choices. And we never want to exploit or mislead. But let’s remember how the excitement from holding the lotto ticket and the peace of mind in having the ESC carry value.
     Keep it simple for your shoppers. Emphasize possibilities, not probabilities. Research says this is what your customers want to hear.