Slip Variety into Sleepy Shopper Selling

Sleepy shoppers favor variety and novelty. Researchers at University of British Columbia, University of Hong Kong, and Tsinghua University say this finding is counterintuitive. You’d expect sleepyheads to want to simplify decision tasks so they could start napping. The narrower the portfolio to filter, the better, so you’d think. But it turns out that, instead, because consumers often consider their shopping to be necessary, they hanker for enough variety to stimulate themselves into wakefulness. Along with this, people make riskier decisions when they’re sleepy, and having more alternatives available increases the feeling of risk.
     Knowing that sleepiness increases the attractiveness of variety is useful to marketers like you. A significant proportion of your target markets are sleep deprived. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than a third of American adults are not getting enough sleep. The problem is worse in minority communities, among unmarried adults with limited education, and at times of high unemployment. It’s also situational. On the day or two after changing from standard time to daylight savings or the other way around, people feel sleepier. The researchers documented more variety seeking in purchases of candy and beer following a shift to DST. In addition, many people get tired after work at their job or simply because it’s evening.
     Any of these factors should alert you to the possible advantages of alerting sleepy-looking shoppers, such as by increasing the variety of alternatives you present and including novel choices. This could influence how you advertise, display products, and progress through face-to-face selling. The researchers hypothesize that bars and restaurants will increase revenues if they offer different happy-hour specials on different days rather than the same items each day.
     Variety seeking is not always in your best interest. If you want to introduce the customer to a new brand, their attraction to switching is fine. However, when the brand the customer has been buying delivers good value for them and high profits for you, you’d prefer to delay brand switching.
     Research findings from Carnegie Mellon University, University of Minnesota, and New York University suggest we slow down switching by encouraging thoughts of other alternatives already tried. If the shopper talks about purchasing a different brand “to break out of my routine,” ask, “What are some other brands you’ve used in the past, and what convinced you to start using our brand you’re using now?”

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