Divine the Horoscope Phenomenon

With the proper techniques, you as a retailer can sharpen your ability to predict what your shopper will want and, in doing so, increase your odds of closing a profitable sale.
     At the same time, though, anecdotal evidence points up how, with certain sorts of consumer choices, honing your prediction skills is a waste of time.
     Here’s one of those anecdotes told to me by a highly esteemed psychologist:
     Ernest R. Hilgard, my doctoral dissertation advisor when I was at Stanford University, would occasionally talk about when he himself was a graduate student. He said that at Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D., there were a number of “ladies groups” whose members were fascinated by idea that psychologists could “read people’s minds.” He enjoyed speaking to these groups and doing what might be described as a parlor trick:
     He’d bring with him to the talk index cards containing a brief personality description on each card. One card might read, in part, “You hold strong opinions and often disagree with family members.” Another card might read, “You are easily convinced by others, even if what they say might seem incorrect at first.”
     Toward the start of his talk, he would ask the ladies to complete a brief questionnaire. Then later, while the ladies were sipping their tea, he’d look at their answers. When the ladies resumed their meeting, he’d distribute an index card to each lady saying that, based on her answers to the questionnaire, he was able to analyze her personality.
     Prof. Hilgard told me with a smile that, most of the time, the woman would read the card and report the description was accurate.
     He would then reveal to the women two items: First, he’d obtained the descriptions for the index cards by copying down entries from horoscopes in the local newspaper. Second, he’d distributed the index cards randomly, with no attention to the questionnaire answers he’d pretended to analyze.
     Because human personality is so complex with many countervailing themes and because the index card rigmarole had been carried out by a Yale-educated budding psychologist, Mr. Hilgard’s audience members were convinced the personality analyses were accurate.
     In a parallel way, if you as a retailer state with confidence that you fully understand your shoppers’ needs and desires, and if the shoppers believe you know more than they do about the item, your prediction can be considered accurate.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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