Confuse Consumers When It Satisfies

There are retailing sales circumstances in which confusing the consumer will produce greater customer satisfaction, according to researchers at University of Warwick and Glasgow Caledonian University-London. If the confusion comes from having too much information to filter through or from what seems to be evasiveness by the salesperson, the shopper will be less satisfied with decisions they feel obliged to make. However, if the shopper becomes confused about which of a set of good alternatives is best, the shopper usually ends up confident in the purchase decision and therefore quite satisfied.
     In addition, researchers at University of Maryland, University of Chicago, and Yale University make a case for processing difficulty sometimes implying that an item is exclusive, and therefore of higher quality. This is most likely, the researchers say, with special occasion gifts which the consumer doesn’t buy regularly.
     Consumer behavior findings about gifts do often differ from findings about other purchases. For example, findings from Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, and University of Chicago suggest that when a gift is expected, the givers who wait until the last minute get increasingly interested in avoiding pain. The result is that they’re willing to pay more for a gift and often more willing to upgrade to a fancier gift.
     And packaging counts with gifts, including a bit of difficulty in opening the present. Anthropologists at University of Florida observed how important admiring the gift wrapping and the unwrapping of the gift are as cultural rituals. Consider offering gift wrapping as a value-added service.
     The notion that processing difficulty can draw special attention is not new. Classic research by psychologist Edward Wheeler Scripture found that a bit of puzzlement in a headline—whether for a newspaper article or newspaper ad—increases interest in reading what follows. In an 1895 book, Dr. Scripture used his studies’ findings to suggest putting commercial notices upside down in order to attract the consumer’s close attention to the content, thereby increasing the likelihood of purchase.
     When shoppers are evaluating possible acquisitions, they usually associate ease of understanding with familiarity, and familiarity stimulates liking. Therefore, it would seem we’d always want our advertisements and sales presentations to be easy to understand. In ads, we’d want to use high contrast and in sales presentations, we’d want to make our points succinctly, it would seem. However, maintaining a retailer’s edge requires mastery of the exceptions to the general rules.

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Simplify for the Shopper 
Imply Exclusivity Using Processing Difficulty