“…You agree to grant Us a nontransferable option to claim, for now and forevermore, Your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, You agree to surrender Your immortal soul, and any claim You may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification….”About 88% of the transactions were with acceptance of those terms and conditions during one day alone. In fact, it was only for that one day alone, since the day happened to be April 1. On the second of the month, with April Fools’ Day having passed, GameStation removed the immortal soul clause, plus announced that they were nullifying for now and forevermore the pledges collected.
Few people will read the terms and conditions thoroughly when making a purchase decision. As a New York Times article pointed out, merchants can swindle, and even endanger, their customers because of this. Disclosures of side effects on medicine bottles. Piles of documents presented for signature in order to move a mortgage loan into escrow. Written notices of possible conflict of interest from attorneys, accountants, and financial advisors. Those doing the selling can too often figure that their ethical responsibility ends when they’ve buried the prospect in disclaimers.
It doesn’t. Retailing ethics requires giving to shoppers what they need to make an informed decision. Information overload corrupts informed decisions.
Be selective. If you sense something is important for the customer to know, tell it to them. And if your intent is to mislead or betray, that’s sinful. But presenting information selectively usually assists the consumer. Researchers at University of Twente in the Netherlands, University of Indiana, and University of Cincinnati set out to confuse study participants by adding to the sales pitch technical jargon, unfamiliar words, illogical product groupings, and dollar prices restated as cents. The result was that the participants chose items more quickly and with more certainty than would be in their best interests.
Researchers at European University Viadrina find that when a salesperson selectively volunteers negative information about a product that’s being considered by the shopper, the shopper becomes more likely to trust everything the salesperson says.
Keep the words and logic simple. If there’s too much complexity, the shopper won’t hook the talk of negative information to the salesperson’s credibility.
For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers
Click below for more:
Disclose Selectively to Facebook Referrals
Disclose Product Cautions
Pace Disclaimers to Build Faster Acceptance
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