Stimulate Consumption Visions with Ads

Once the shopper has narrowed the choices to considering one item for purchase, we’d like them to imagine using the item. This increases the probability of a sale. Consumer researchers use the term “consumption vision” to describe a shopper’s mental image which is vivid and specific enough to let a shopper vicariously experience the benefits they would personally enjoy in using the product or service.
     Researchers at National Chengchi University in Taiwan find that ads are more likely to produce consumption visions if they are for hedonic, pleasure-giving, products, such as shampoo rather than for routine utilitarian products, such as dental floss.
     Other research provides tips for formatting the ads:

• Use vivid language to stimulate the senses: “As you enter your room, you’ll be tempted to take off your shoes immediately so your feet can sink into the plush carpeting.” 
• In pictures, include people resembling your target audience in age, ethnicity, likely physical possessions, and so on. This makes the imagining easier than when there’s no plausible match. 
• Make the pictures easy to interpret. Arizona State University researchers compared the effects on prospective vacationers of an ad with a photograph and an ad with the photo modified to resemble a creative abstract painting. Those people shown the version with the literal photograph were more positively persuaded. 
• Researchers from Brigham Young University and University of Michigan say to show the product oriented toward the viewer’s dominant hand. Since most people are right-handed, this means a more effective ad is showing a mirror image of the setup for a right-handed person to use the product. The consumer is looking at the ad, so what would be closest to the consumer’s right hand is to the left of a person whose image faces us in the ad. 
• Ask the shopper to imagine usage by whomever would end up actually using the product. Usually, this is the person who is making the purchase. But with products like pet foods and birthday gifts, the user is different from the purchaser. 
• Give the shopper the minimum amount of technical information necessary to set up the imagining. Then be ready to provide more details if the shopper asks when they come into the store or proceed on the website. The power of imagining is greater when a person fills in their own blanks. 

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

Click below for more: 
Help Shoppers Use Their Imagination 
Hand Shoppers An Aid to Imagining Usage 
Ask Shoppers to Imagine Usage Benefits