Flow Consumers Into Good Financial Habits

You’d like your target consumers to be in good financial as well as physical health. Let them live long and prosper. And spend their years and money shopping with you. Let them go with the flow.
     Or more precisely, the flow state. Psychologists talk of a “flow state” in which a person who makes a consumer decision then becomes more likely to make another similar decision and then another.
     Researchers at Northwestern University analyzed flow states in people facing an uncomfortably common problem in our economic downturn: Getting out of debt. They found that a good predictor of the consumer’s success was the number of credit accounts closed toward the start of the debt elimination program. The dollar balance of the credit accounts closed at the start was not a good predictor of success. It was the momentum of closing accounts which made a difference.
     The same principle works when the consumers are out of debt and fit to spend. This is what happened in a study conducted by researchers at Yale University, Duke University, and Carnegie Mellon University:
     Some study participants were invited to buy a CD that had been previously judged as appealing to people like the participants. The rest of the participants were invited, instead, to buy a light bulb. Yes, the butt of all those “how many does it take” jokes. A lowly light bulb. As you might expect, a higher percentage of the CD group than the light bulb group decided to make the purchase.
     Next, all participants—regardless of what they’d been offered before and whether they made a purchase—were invited to buy a keychain. Shopping momentum evidenced itself. A higher percentage from the CD group than from the light bulb group decided to buy the keychain, and those in the light bulb group who did make the purchase were more likely to buy the key chain that those who turned down the light bulb offer.
     In your selling, start out with such an appealing request that the shopper is very likely to say yes, and then use this yes as a base for presenting a series of larger requests. Consumer psychologists have repeatedly found that getting a yes to a simple request makes the person much more likely to agree to a bigger request if benefits follow that yes to the simple one.
     Don’t exploit purchase momentum, but do use it.

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

Click below for more: 
Put Foot-in-the-Door to Build Trust 
Maintain Purchase Momentum in Customers 
Credit the Appeal of Cash 
Expand Marketing to Credit Risk Consumers