Suppose I said this guy owned 2,000 paintings. He enjoyed looking at the paintings and showing them to others. Wouldn’t you agree that as long as he pays his bills, this is okay? As a psychologist, I’m ready to say that the man with the wrenches may not be mentally ill at all.
Actually, if I ran a store with a hand tool department, I could learn to love this guy. I might ask him to recruit a group of his buddies to form a “wrench-of-the-month” club. I’d spring for the refreshments if they’d hold the meetings at my store.
Let’s encourage our customers to be collectors. Here are three research-based motivations we can use:
- Fantasy identification. More people will be interested in collecting figurines, bells, or dolls than wrenches. Researchers at University of Minnesota, University of Arizona, and Notre Dame University found that collectors often view each item in their collection as a fantasy image of themselves. Past research suggested that adults developmentally outgrow the appeal of fantasy. However, the popularity of fantasy football leagues, the Home Shopping Network, and Internet pornography would seem to prove those research findings incomplete. In selling collectibles, give each item a personality the customer wants.
- Reminders of experiences. University of Minnesota researchers pointed out how some items in a collection gain special importance because of the wealth of the owner’s personal experiences that have become associated with the items. Even an exact replica of a lost or broken item wouldn’t be a sufficient replacement. Before offering a new item in a collectible series, ask the customer to tell you their experiences with the items they’ve had.
- Sense of completeness. University of Nebraska-Lincoln research found that as children approach age 11, their desire to have complete collections grows. In most adults up through middle age, the urge for completeness often comes to play less of a role in purchasing behavior. To sell to the adult collector, you might want to redefine what constitutes a complete collection.
Ethically Develop Kids into Collectors
Meet Customers’ Desires for Nostalgia
Suggest Nostalgic Items to Lonely Shoppers
Offer Family-Oriented Experiences
"Collecting objects with FUN; Surprise Toys" seems to be closer to the third title, but with one addition... As you claimed; most adult collectors give up completing their newer toy collections by time, but in some cases; maturity of adulthood helps to be more organized to complete the collections of older toy concepts in some way and to present what s/he has been collecting since the childhood.
ReplyDeleteThere are some collectors who are very serious about completing their toy collections which are sold in the market as "surprise toy" as an additional value to the chocolate / candy or gum. The most popular one is the subject of my comment; the surprise toys sold in chocolate eggs; such as Kinder Surprise...
Promoting this kind of collecting habit is the aim of such brands for both kids and adults to keep on collecting and completing the brand's seasonal toy concepts more than selling chocolate, candy..etc. Thus, such toy collectors who got this habit when they were child in 80's still keep on investing in such brands. Today we can observe them presenting their detailed collections not only by the photos of their toys, but also the instruction sheets of each toy group on their own web sites. Those who own such big surprise toy collections must have shown a great effort behind it because to find new surprises in each chocolate purchasing time is not easy. Especially when there are about 60 toys for 1 seasonal collection of a brand, completing all these toys needs to pay again and again by taking the risk of facing the same toys that you had just bought before!
Because of such adults to be eager to complete new sets of toy, the quality of some hook toys in this group has been becoming better, even though the production costs are tried to be reduced nowadays. For example we seasonally see beautifully hand painted figurines as surprise toys especially for last three years. This may be a result of the brand strategy which considers not only today's kids, but also yesterday's.
Thank you, Nur, for your insights about creating lifelong collectors.
ReplyDeleteWith American consumers, a great example of the collecting of a season’s items as being more important than getting the accompanying food item was the popularity of baseball card sets that came with bubblegum. The gum was of questionable quality, but the gum quality wasn’t why a child or adult baseball fan would buy the package.
As you point out, the dedicated collector would almost surely end up with many duplicates—plus an overabundance of bubblegum with the cards or of chocolate with the Kinder Surprise eggs. Well, okay, maybe there’s no such thing in life as an overabundance of chocolate.
In our era of social networking, I’m thinking that a retailer could build interest in the products that carry collectibles by establishing avenues for people to swap the duplicates. For that to work, the collectible items would need to have sufficient appeal. In addition, there would need to be a new line of collectibles each season or each year so there are regularly new surprise toys to look for and so more eggs, bubblegum, cereal boxes, or other merchandise to purchase.
Thank you for mentioning this cultural example to inform me Mr Sanders, i mean baseball card collections of Americans.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, what i have observed by the companies i have been in relation with until now has been the search for new lines of collectibles, too, but not only to sell the collectible item(like a card game set), but also to get them "try" the new products by an additional value.
For example, to introduce a new biscuit brand to kids with some pieces of a new card game in each package usually eases the introduction of its taste to consumers in the beginning.
The change in consumption frequency of some seasonal food items is another reason to add the product a collecting value, too. Thus, retailers design new collecting lines, as you mentioned. For instance, creamy fruit brands(such as Danino) give collectible icecream sticks & molds in different cartoony forms/colors to offer kids a new way to make their own icecreams by freezing the yoghurt in joyful forms seasonally, so that those brands are able to compete with icecream sales in summers.
Of course additional value does not only mean "another product" offered with the item in that package. That package can have an additional function by itself for the consumer; such as a metal package for a new food item(again of most loved ones: candy, chocolate,..etc) which has a beautiful licensed pattern/sketch on each that consumers(especially adults) will follow that brand to collect those patterns as well as they consume the food and keep using their packages as boxes of jewelry, pill..etc.
These are examples from my experiences in relation with such designs which aim to create new collection lines with different values.