Respect the Limits of Your Influence

Tactics in this RIMtailing blog are powerful. For example, even a brief mental nudge of a customer toward thinking in the long-term significantly increases the possibility they’ll spend more money in your store.
     However, it’s also important to recognize the limits of our influence on the purchase behavior of customers. Respect other forces in each consumer’s life.

• Genetics. Whether a shopper prefers innovative or more cautious alternatives. Whether a person likes or dislikes chocolate, mustard, hybrid cars, or science fiction movies. At what point the shopper stops gathering information and makes a purchase decision. According to research findings from Stanford University and University of Florida-Gainesville, these are transmitted biologically to us from our parents as tendencies. People differ in these characteristics as much because of different genetics as because of the shopper psychology tactics we employ.
• The time of day, week, or month. In the afternoon, senior citizens are more resistant to logical arguments for making a purchase than in the morning. Researchers at University of Utah and University of Iowa find that monthly paycheck cycles affect not only how much money people will spend on merchandise, but also the types of merchandise they’ll find most attractive. In the days soon after receiving a paycheck, consumers with full-time jobs become more interested in products and services that help them gain more than what they currently have. Then as the days after the paycheck pass, the person becomes progressively more interested in items to help them avoid losing whatever they have now.
• What happened to the shopper just before they interacted with us. Maybe they took a medication for depression that cooled the urge to shop. Maybe they saw a cute baby or puppy. Researchers at Claremont Graduate University find that seeing something cute sets off the release into our brain of a substance called oxytocin, which has been called “the love hormone.” That hormone increases our willingness to spend money if we believe it will be helpful to others—such as helpful to people for whom we’ll buy a gift or the salespeople from whom we’ll buy it.

     The importance of recognizing our limitations? For one thing, if you try a shopping psychology tactic that doesn’t work out well, try it out a few times again before dismissing it as useless. Trying it out only once and then dismissing it is as bad as superstition.

Click below for more:
Give Customers Long-Range Perspectives
Attend to Genetic Influences in Selling
Identify Influencers in Family Decision Making
Help Seniors to Shop Early
Acknowledge the Power of Cycles
Merchandise to Fit Purchasing Cycles
Avoid Panic When Cash Flow Drops