Improve Sales Using Guilty Self-Improvement

Suppose that as people enter your store, they pass a table in the front where I offer them a cup of herbal tea to enjoy prior to their browsing around. They’ve only two choices, though: The Get Smart blend is described as improving brain power. The Get Happy blend is said to keep the blues away.
     Are there shopper characteristics influencing who chooses which blend? Researchers at University of British Columbia documented a chief characteristic—guilt. People experiencing guilt selected the Get Smart blend more often than did people not experiencing guilt. Your shoppers who believe they’ve failed to meet standards they’ve set for themselves subsequently become more open to purchasing products and services described as designed for self-improvement.
     Possible sources of shopper guilt are many. Those you might encounter as a retailer include, for example, a customer being late for an appointment with you or succumbing to temptation to make a purchase previously resisted. The self-improvement items you could offer also range widely. The British Columbia researchers list signing up to learn a new language, joining a gym, reading a challenging book, and agreeing to meet with a financial planner. But any retail business could describe items to consumers in ways that allow for penance via effort.
     Moreover, a perfectly good sales pitch for a pleasure-oriented item can be made even better by adding guilt, according to studies at Northwestern University, Pennsylvania State University, and Yale University. The researchers are talking about guilty pleasures—the added kick in enjoyment coming from the consumer saying, “I really shouldn’t be doing this, but it feels oh so good.”
     Psychologists generally classify guilt as a negative emotion and consider that a negative emotion, like sadness, can potentiate a positive emotion, like enjoyment, only through contrast: “This massage feels especially wonderful because I’ve been down in the dumps all week.”
     Guilt is a different kind of catalyst, the research concludes. Where it might make little sense for a retailer to induce sadness in the shopper in order to increase enjoyment, inducing a little guilt can work out fine: “Go ahead and do it. You can’t always be perfect.” This isn’t saying, “Go ahead and do it. You’ve plenty of time to feel guilty afterwards.” This is a matter of arousing guilt during the consumption.
     Whether a shopper comes to you guilty or you induce a bit of guilt, the emotion can sell.

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

Click below for more: 
Gild the Lily with Guilt
Go for Customer Gratitude and Guilt
Get Strange to Ease Shopper Guilt
Gobble Those Valentine Chocolates Guilt-Free
Sell Either Protection or Promotion