Differentiate Virtual Social Media Influencers

A social media influencer is often a real human with a known personality, but also could be created using computer graphics software and then presented to the marketplace with a storyline complex enough to portray a memorable personality. That’s a virtual influencer. Researchers at University of Zaragoza compared the effectiveness of the two types when persuading consumers.
     Based on their study results, the researchers report that, overall, the two types can be equally influential. This is valuable for marketers to know because virtual influencers, compared to their human counterparts, are more reliably available, don’t change unless that’s intended, are more easily directed, and present less risk of becoming associated with distracting public scandals.
     Still, there are differences in the mechanism of persuasion for the two types. The human influencer’s power arises from development of a persona the consumer can identify with. The virtual influencer persuades based on the consumer’s perception of more objective, and therefore more useful, advice than would come from a human. The consumer impression that virtual-influencer creation requires artificial intelligence technologies strengthens the sense that the virtual influencer possesses strong analytical and logical capabilities.
     An implication, which is supported by the study results, is that marketers should employ human social media influencers for endorsements of hedonic, pleasure-oriented, items and employ virtual influencers for utilitarian item endorsements. The products used in the studies were a computer laptop as the utilitarian example and a hotel room as the hedonic example.
     Some virtual influencers, such as Any Malu and Anna Cattish are cartoonish versions of humans. However, most of the leading ones, such as Thalasya and Lu do Magalu, closely resemble a human’s appearance. This points to another issue for marketers to consider: Will such a close resemblance spook rather than enchant viewers?
     When people can’t tell whether a robot, a mannequin, or some other representation of a human is real or not, the people experience revulsion. If the android looks exactly like an attractive human being, people are attracted to it. If it looks similar to a human, but people can easily tell it’s not real, they’re amused. However, when the resemblance is very close, but they are not sure if it’s real, they’re creeped out. That dip in the positive emotion is why the effect is called the uncanny valley.
     It might be best to use a virtual influencer which resembles a human, but is easily distinguishable.

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Remind Consumers of Robots’ Competence 

Eclipse Celebrity Endorsers Who Moon 

Sidestep Celebrity Endorser Certification 

Creep Out Shoppers, But Explain

Curate Ads to Arouse Curiosity

As soon as a shopper focuses on your intentions to influence them toward buying a product, they become less likely to make the purchase. The effect is substantial. For instance, it cuts in half, on average, the persuadability of advertising. Researchers at University of Hohenheim attribute the effect to shopper skepticism and show that arousing curiosity via the ad can ease the skepticism.
     In the studies, consumers’ curiosity was aroused by showing pictures of gift items with information on the box labels too small to read or by listing prospective potato chip flavors with a few letters missing from each flavor name. In some of the studies and for some of the study participants, the ambiguity was subsequently resolved by clearly showing the full information.
     The resulting evidence was that aroused curiosity decreases skepticism about the messages in an ad and that resolved ambiguity produces pleasant feelings which spread to positive evaluations of items featured in the ad.
     A long train of research has shown how arousing curiosity in consumers and then satisfying the curiosity increases the potential of a sale. Research findings from Indiana University and University of Colorado-Boulder verified the value of a mystery ad format, in which you wait until the end to announce the brand name. Start off with an unusual story or absurd humor which dramatizes the category of item and hooks the ad’s viewer or listener into thinking “Who’s this commercial for, anyway?”
     These studies had to do with curiosity which is satisfied. Other research finds that unsatisfied curiosity motivates impulse buying. Gently kick prospective customers toward purchasing impulsively by prolonging their curiosity, advise researchers at University of Arizona and University of Washington. In one of their studies, they aroused curiosity by showing participants blurred images and assessed impulsive consumption by offering a quantity of chocolate candies and noting how many the person ate. When curiosity was aroused and a rewarding resolution was not provided, more chocolate candies were consumed.
     Another technique used to arouse curiosity was asking study participants to write about questions for which they wanted answers. The influence of curiosity without closure was seen not only in the choices made by the study participants, but also in their brain activity. People with unresolved curiosity showed elevations in blood oxygenation of the insula, a brain area associated with the desire for rewards when there is no surety of receiving the rewards.

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Cruise Through When People Suspect Selling 

Kick the Sale with Curiosity

Tag with Likeable or Memorable Taglines

What we most like as consumers may be quite different from what we best remember as consumers. According to a set of studies at University of Missouri, City University of London, and University of Arizona, that statement holds true at least for a marketing tagline—the slogan a brand intends to grab our positive attention and carve a lasting positive impression. For Walmart, it’s “Save Money. Live Better.” For Sears, it was “The good life at a great price.” The linguistic properties of a likeable tagline differ from those for a memorable tagline.
     The difference has to do with the ease of mental processing. All else equal, consumers like simplicity, so a slogan that’s easier to mentally process will be liked better. Such taglines are relatively shorter, use highly familiar words, and refer to intangibles—concepts such as satisfaction and love. For instance, in the studies, taglines such as “The cure for mankind” were liked better than taglines such as “The antidote for civilization.”
     But when the mental processing of the tagline requires more time and effort to understand, the payoff is that it’s better able to burrow into the brain, making it more memorable. In the studies, these slogans included words which are less common and referred to concrete characteristics—what we can see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. For instance, taglines such as “Your word is our wedding ring” were remembered better than taglines such as “We keep your promises.” Using a metaphor in a tagline might also add to the complexity of mental processing.
     Well-established brands have less to gain from increasing memorability than they risk losing from unlikability, note the researchers. Fluent slogans are best. But for brands new to a marketplace, memorability counts, so refer to concrete concepts and use less-common words.
     The researchers explored the effect of including the brand name in the tagline—"Horlicks guards against night starvation” versus “Guards against night starvation.” They found that the inclusion increased the mental processing toll and so would be better for brands establishing a reputation.
     Another set of studies revealed an additional wrinkle: People were asked to think about the Walmart and former Sears slogans. It turned out this increased the amount of money the people were willing to spend during a shopping trip. In fact, the amount was twice as much after thinking about the slogan than after thinking about the store name.

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Poke the Two Faces of Metaphors 

Give Shoppers Permission to Spend More 

Sensitize to Waste for Abnormal Produce

Order & Partition Custom Health Plan Options

The notion of choice architecture is that the format in which we present alternatives to the consumer significantly influences the consumer’s choices. A set of studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Columbia University, and University of Pennsylvania provides an example of choice architecture with findings about selecting a healthcare insurer. The researchers note that such decisions are complex because of the differences among plans in conditions covered, deductible amounts, and required copays; are important because of the effects of healthcare coverage on a subscriber’s lifespan and financial stability; and are of societal interest because of evidence that consumers often overpay for coverage.
     A primary reason consumers have difficulty making the best decisions involving future risk, such as healthcare insurance, is that people focus excessively on the worst possibilities and pay insufficient attention to the probabilities of the various future situations. Artificial intelligence which uses information about the individual plan shopper and the range of plan characteristics allows for optimizing choice.
     Consumers are likely to rebel against being given only one plan to select from. What’s needed is a set of recommendations and a nudge toward the best one rather than a directive. In my email exchange about the studies with Prof. Benedict Dellaert, the lead researcher, he wrote, “Besides the fact that consumers may not like receiving only one plan as a recommendation, another important reason to offer them a small set is that models/algorithms will often not have a perfect prediction for each consumer. Offering choice can improve the consumer-product fit.”
     The choice architecture tested in the studies combined ordering with partitioning. In one version of the presentations, healthcare coverage options were listed roughly in order from best to least good in likelihood of minimizing cost for the consumer. The options were then partitioned by initially limiting the display of choices to the top candidates, with the consumer able to view all the remaining alternatives by clicking on a button.
     Study participants were more likely to select an optimal plan with this type of choice architecture than with an unranked list or with only ordering or partitioning.
     Regarding you using such a choice architecture, Prof. Dellaert cautions, “The model/algorithm must be of sufficiently high quality, including in terms of reflecting the consumer’s best interest, for the ordering with partitioning to help. If the ordering is antagonistic to the consumer preference, the partitioning may instead harm the consumer decision outcome.”

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Reduce Risk Fears by Introducing Choices 

Compare Features to Ease Overload 

React When Faced with Reactance 

Betray the Betrayal Effect 

Influence the Compromise Choice Process 

Go Fourth in a Five-Item Horizontal Choice

Donate Positive & Negative Right for Charity

Marketers soliciting charitable contributions via emotional appeals need to determine the optimal blend of positive and negative in campaigns. How much to show smiling children and a message of gratitude for the positive impact of past contributions? How much to show sad children alongside a message that failure to contribute endangers lives of kids like these? Which objectives are best achieved with text saying that the healthy animals or lush landscapes shown in the photos are due to donations from people similar to the person viewing the solicitation? And which objectives are best achieved by text saying that the dead animals and damaged landscapes shown are because people failed to step up to help?
     Researchers at Complutense University of Madrid used such materials to evaluate study participants’ reactions. The study is distinctive and the conclusions more trustworthy because in addition to the behavioral measures of willingness to donate, neuropsychological data were gathered. Analyses of participants’ eye movements and their brain waves—electroencephalogram tracings—were interpreted to assess the attention paid to the solicitations and the impacts on emotional arousal from the solicitations.
     The overall conclusions provide guidance for when to use each type of appeal. Employ a negative appeal when your main objective is to increase donations in the short term. Those solicited will contribute in an effort to ease their negative feelings stimulated by the ad. But if your main objective is to engage the person for the longer-term, such as to enroll in monthly giving, use a positive appeal.
     The results also have implications for placement of emotion-arousing stimuli in the images and text of a printed solicitation: People spend more time exploring the text area when the ad is positively-toned and more time exploring the image area when the ad is negatively-toned.
     Generally, the positivity of an attractive solicitor will increase contributions. But a University of Alberta study found an exception to that rule. The researchers set up a set of fictitious websites on which visitors were asked to financially sponsor a child from a developing country.
     When the children were portrayed as having severe needs, facial attractiveness made no difference in the willingness to help. But when the level of need was not severe, people demonstrated less compassion for attractive than for unattractive children. The researchers attribute this effect to people assuming that attractive children would be better able to recruit help on their own.

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Profit Your Nonprofit by Arousing Gratitude 

Consider Karma in Contributions

Foment FOMO & Fear for Crypto Crazy

What persuades people to invest in cryptocurrencies, given the level of financial risk with even the most stable alternatives? In describing the popularity of cryptos, researchers at Universitat Ramon Llull note that financially vulnerable minorities are overrepresented among the range of investors. Therefore, perhaps the appeal is related to that of lotteries: The poor are drawn to dreams of cashing in big while ignoring the odds of crashing down big.
     Those researchers then go on to explore the power of FOMO. People’s caution about cryptos is dissolved by a fear of missing out on the astounding financial gains they believe others are achieving. For one of the studies, the researchers used as participants people who had recently invested in cryptos. The participants were asked to pretend they were considering another crypto investment. Some then read, “Other users, traders, and investors have posted comments and videos on this social media platform about the release of this crypto. They have commended the hype about this new crypto and how profitable it might be. So, you think you are missing out if you do not invest.” The others read, instead, “Other users, traders and investors have not mentioned anything about this crypto and have not shown any interest on this social media platform. So, you are not sure about the hype of this crypto and its profitability. You do not think you are missing out on anything if you finally decide not to invest.”
     As the researchers predicted, the fear of missing out resulted in higher agreement with, “It’s very likely that I will invest in this new crypto.” Additional studies in the set supported the conclusion that FOMO precipitated the investment interest and that this worked even when the investor had experienced prior losses. The implication is that sales of highly risky instruments can be increased with use of a FOMO appeal.
     However, consumer advocates and ethical financial advisors will want to curb financially vulnerable consumers’ attraction to crypto. The researchers found evidence that a fear message can counteract the FOMO effect. The text used in the study was, “9 out of 10 investors suffer severe losses when investing in crypto.”
     A separate project found the driving force of FOMO toward cryptocurrency investing is more likely in people who show high interpersonal agreeableness and low self-confidence. When a financial advisor identifies these characteristics in a consumer, delivering fear messages is especially important.

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Dissect the Shopper’s Risk Tolerance 

Launch Items Which Arouse Competitiveness 

Stick It to Some Shoppers

Green Up Your Corporate Social Responsibility

Offering products designed with sensitivity to environmental welfare—green products—improves the attractiveness of a store carrying them. A University of Indiana analysis of 75 green product introductions finds that this doesn’t uniformly equate to more buying of the products, though. Increased profitability often comes from purchases of items not carrying the green designation. In fact, the presence of socially conscious products makes it more likely the customer will buy products that do not embody social consciousness. It’s as if having chosen the store is enough to satisfy the shopper’s desire to display green values.
     By comparison, when a brand designs its corporate social responsibility programs to benefit environmental welfare, the positive emotion among consumers results in increased purchases of the related products.
     For their analyses, researchers at Imperial College London and University of Southern California sorted CSR initiatives into three categories—targeted to fair labor practices, such as contributing resources for the betterment of its employees; targeted to community philanthropy, such as making donations to nonprofit organizations; and targeted to environmental sustainability, such as supporting the welfare of nature.
     Participants in the set of studies were each provided a description of a wine brand, hand soap brand, or stationary paper brand which engaged in one of the three types of CSR initiative, or in no CSR initiative. Each participant was also invited to purchase the described product, using a portion of money given to all as a stipend for study participation.
     Compared to those people not told of the brand’s CSR initiative, those told of an environmental CSR were more likely to spend their money purchasing the product. This was not generally true when the CSR initiative was described as targeted to employee welfare or community philanthropy.
     Further aspects of the studies identified the explanation for the effect as moral elevation, a characteristic measured by high degree of agreement with statements such as “The brand moves me because of the ideas it represents” and “The brand makes me want to be a better person.” CSR efforts targeted to environmental welfare generated greater moral elevation, and the moral elevation resulted in higher sales of the associated products.
     In the marketplace, shoppers will look for evidence beyond the CSR programs to judge the true values of a brand. Still, the general truth is that enabling shoppers to feel good about themselves improves sales, and environmentally-targeted CSR helps with that.

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Wash Away Your Greenwash Products 

Apologize via Corporate Social Responsibility

Couple Fiscal Intercourse

Marketers benefit when shoppers have money skills. The shoppers will be better able to pay their bills and so have funds to spend with you. Building those skills should begin early. As part of your community outreach, encourage parents to include their kids in financial literacy talk.
     A set of studies at Indiana University, University of Michigan, Yale University, and Northwestern University indicates that as those kids approach marriage age, the talk should include encouragement of husband and wife setting up joint rather than separate banking accounts at the start. During the first two years of marriage, couples who established joint accounts had a stronger relationship quality than did couples with separate accounts.
     The researchers attribute this to the partners with joint accounts engaging in more interpersonal dialogues about financial goals and more monitoring of each other’s spending habits. With joint accounts, each partner is thinking how they’ll justify large purchases to their mate. Regularly discussing expenditures and plans for expenditures with each other leads to insights about the important values each partner maintains—a valuable contributor to an enduring relationship.
     Couples often aim to balance their shopping tendencies. Tightwads—who recognize they should be more willing to spend money—tend to marry spendthrifts—who recognize they should be more cautious in spending. They married each other to help moderate the extremes. Joint accounts assist with this.
     The study of joint-versus-separate-accounts is notable because of the implications for the strength of marriages. It’s also notable because of the research methodology. In choosing a two-year tracking time, the researchers report that this span has been considered in prior studies as foreshadowing marital fate. 
     The research methodology also resolves causation direction. We might argue that couples who decide on their own to set up joint accounts already have a stronger relationship than do couples who decide to set up separate accounts at the start. So it’s not that joint accounts cause stronger relationships. It’s that relationship strength causes joint accounts. Or maybe it’s just that the two are correlated, caused by some other factor.
     The researchers addressed this by randomly assigning some of the couples in the study to set up joint accounts and others to set up individual accounts. When the researchers then assessed marriage relationship strength at six points over the first two years of the marriage, they could legitimately attribute the observed differences to the effects of the account type.

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Include the Kids in Financial Literacy Talk 

Couple Wise Consumer Decisions 

Note Influence in Nontraditional Couples

Strengthen Weekday Sales with Music

Psychological depletion influences all sorts of consumer behavior, and it occurs not just within the span of a single day, but also in the difference between weekdays and weekends. A set of University of Bath and Babson College studies finds that in-store music boosts sales Monday through Thursday to a substantially greater extent than Friday through Sunday. The researchers’ explanation, supported by the studies, is that shoppers are under greater pressure during the workweek, and music fosters positive feelings in ways which enhance the shopping experience and restore depleted spirits. Music seemed to be more influential during later hours on the weekdays, when people would be expected to be more depleted than earlier in the day.
     The findings held for both background and foreground music in a grocery store field study. The researchers describe the background music as, “elevator music, with songs in major modes,” and no lyrics. The foreground music was, “songs that were popular at the time of the study and included vocals, likely to be recognized as individual songs.” The volume was designed to be just sufficient to be heard clearly over ambient noise in the store, and the playlist was long enough so that it avoided repetitiveness for employees as well as shoppers.
     The researchers point out their findings apply most clearly to retailers serving people on-the-job from Monday through Thursday. For a customer base composed primarily of vacationers or retirees, different strategies for using music would be called for.
     Other studies say that the music you play, as well as whether to play music at all, should reinforce the store personality you set. Among supermarket chains, Aldi stores don’t use music, Kroger stores do. The nature of the music also matters. If your sales depend on the shopper carefully analyzing the purchase decision, either do not have music or use music that is barely noticeable. Researchers at Columbia University and Northwestern University find that when a customer listens to the music in the store, their attention is taken away from analyzing the purchase decision. If you’re wanting the customers to try new brands or new products, eliminate intrusive music.
     Based on those same research findings, use noticeable music—such as music with lyrics—if you both expect and want the shopper to select items from habit without much thought. Noticeable music helps head off arguments the shopper might make to themselves about the purchase.

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Use Music to Motivate, Not Disrupt 

Reanalyze for Day-Parts with Potential

Declare Inexperience to Experience Forgiveness

You want your frontline staff to be experts and for shoppers to recognize the expertise. Yet a trio of researchers at University of Bordeaux and KEDGE Business School find a payoff in boldly proclaiming that an inexperienced frontline staff member is, in fact, not yet an expert: If there’s a service failure during the subsequent sales transaction, the customer is more forgiving of both the employee and the retailer and, if the customer has already built an attachment to the retailer, is more likely to return in the future than if the warning of inexperience had not been provided.
     Based on their study findings, the researchers do add cautions: The customer must not have already experienced a series of service shortfalls from that retailer. And the announcement of employee inexperience must have been given upstream—prior to the service failure—such as by the employee wearing a badge labeled “In Training” or saying at the start, “This is my first week at the job.”
     Researchers from European School of Management and Technology, Loughborough University, Ruhr University Bochum, and FOM Hochschule Hochschulzentrum Berlin identify another effective upstream method, which they call psychological vaccination against disappointment. In their study, a group of 1,254 airline passengers were sent a pre-flight email saying the company’s commitment to service quality had earned it several awards. A set of passengers within the group also received, in their email, phrasing that said long waiting times at the baggage claim cannot be eliminated.
     Among the passengers who subsequently experienced long waiting times, customer satisfaction was clearly higher for those who had received the added message. Importantly, the added message did not decrease customer satisfaction among passengers whose waiting times were shorter. The psychological vaccine only helped. It didn’t hurt.
     Timing of a retailer’s response counts for the downstream, too: Researchers at IMED Business School in Brazil, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven find that an apology for a service failure and a promise it won’t happen again are both effective in recovering trust. But the timing of each influences the effectiveness. An apology, which is seen by the victim as demonstrating integrity, best comes promptly. A promise, seen as a sign of competence, best comes a few weeks after the incident. Perhaps this is because a credible promise requires gathering information about what occurred and what will work to correct the problem.

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Have Staff Who Show and Share Expertise 

Vaccinate Shoppers Against Disappointment 

Multiply Recovery from Double Deviation

Swell Inspiration to Hike Multichannel Buying

Better than only persuading your shoppers to buy from you is inspiring them to buy from you. Inspiration enhances cross-channel purchasing, says a team of researchers at University of Valencia and University of Parma. The studies identified novelty as a significant way to inspire shoppers. Novelty expands mental horizons, which in turn inspires the shopper to consider a broader range of purchasing channels, such as both in-store and online, expanding a seller’s opportunities for profitability.
     In the studies, inspiration via novelty was measured by the consumer’s degree of agreement with four descriptions of their physical store and online shopping experiences: “My imagination was stimulated.” “I was intrigued by a new idea.” “I unexpectedly and spontaneously got new ideas.” “I discovered something new.”
     In the study surveys, participants were asked about purchasing of apparel, accessories, perfume and cosmetics, sport equipment, furniture, electronic appliances, consumer electronics and games. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 65 years. The breadth of merchandise types and respondent ages indicates that the findings hold across consumer marketing situations.
     The studies found relationships between inspiration via novelty on the one hand and, on the other hand, making purchases across channels. The effect is stronger in the direction of in-store to online than from online to in-store. One implication for retailers is to periodically redesign areas of the store in order to maintain novelty when an objective is to hike online selling. Change color schemes and merchandise arrangements.
     Multichannel retailing in itself introduces a sense of novelty and therefore the potential for inspiration. Shoppers find enjoyment in a variety of shopping experiences. But one way they can obtain this enjoyment is to go to different stores. Your customers might be shopping elsewhere even for products they could purchase from you because they seek the stimulation.
     Win those customers back for at least a while by reminding them you’re still around and worth looking in on. Distribute news about developments with the items you carry, such as variants, extensions, added features, and special offers. Then encourage returning shoppers to explore. Researchers at New York University-Stern, University of Pittsburgh, and Drexel University found that a coupon requiring shoppers to travel farther from their planned path to obtain discounted items resulted in an average increase in spending of about $21.00. When the coupon didn’t require wandering from the planned path, the increase was instead about $14.00.

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Utilize Multichannel with Hedonic Selling 

Keep Telling Customers You’re Still Around 

Escort Shoppers on In-Store Travel

Destroy Item Destruction as Overstock Remedy

Some years ago, a graduate student at City University of New York came across bags of unused H&M clothing on the streets of New York. It turned out that staff at the 34th Street store had taken box cutters and razors to merchandise and then trashed the remains.
     In a paper investigating the effects on consumers of such techniques for pruning excess inventory, researchers at Can Tho University, UNSW Sydney, and Monash University note that H&M is not alone. Nike, Burberry, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Victoria’s Secret, Cartier, and Montblanc are all reported to have sent overstock to landfills or to simply have set the stuff aflame.
     The business objective might be to open up space for higher-margin merchandise, cheaply discard out-of-date fashions, or even to create limited supplies of in-fashion items so prices can be kept at premium levels. But when word gets out about these disposal methods, another business objective is undercut: The researchers verify how attitudes toward the retailer turn negative. The resulting image of wastefulness is especially strong for luxury brands. This is not the kind of fire sale technique which benefits your business.
     One alternative to trashing or incinerating is to recycle, which could be considered partial destruction. Recycling was found to actually improve brand image. Other studies suggest that the positive image of recycling can be increased by showing people ads which demonstrate how recycled items are transformed into new items. The method works regardless of whether the transformed item is similar to the recycled item (material from recycled soda cans being used to produce new soda cans) or quite different (material from recycled soda cans being used to produce bicycle frames).
     The best alternative is to have adequate inventory in stock, but not overstock. A technique to consider is Expiration Date Based Pricing, where the retailer lowers the price of items as the expiration date approaches. The thought is that it’s better to sell the item at a reduced profit than not to be able to sell it at all.
     At the time of Sy Syms's death, his company was operating thirty stores in which, stamped on the back of each price ticket, was the date the item was placed on the sales floor, and stamped on the front was a series of dollar amounts in descending order. Every ten selling days, the price moved to the next lower amount on the ticket.

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Repent with Recycling 

Show Products Made of Recycled Items 

Dread the Dead, Sell It First

Swallow Rejections of Engineered Health Foods

People associate all-natural with health enhancement. But if we augment an all-natural food with a health-enhancing supplement, many shoppers will now reject the resulting innovative concoction. Strangely, dislike holds most strongly for people who are highly receptive to novel experiences.
     The Vilnius University and University of Groningen researchers say this happens because people with a low preference for predictability are especially sensitive to ambivalent feelings, and engineered foods generate ambivalent feelings. On the positive side of the item choice, there are the promised additional health benefits. On the negative side, human-engineered supplementation pollutes the natural. The attraction of nature is multifaceted. Some involves adventuresomeness, which is satisfied when trying out an innovative item. Some involves simplicity, which is disrupted when chemicals are added as ingredients.
     The products considered in the different experiments included milk, drinking water, and wheat crackers. In each case, some study participants were asked to consume or to indicate opinions after receiving a description of the item with a health-enhancing supplement, while other participants were asked to do the same when the item was not described as including the supplement. The reduced attractiveness of augmented items was found across the experiments, indicating that the findings can be generalized to the whole category of innovative functional foods. Further, it was found that a reduced attraction to one of the items was associated with a reduced attractiveness of the broad category of innovative functional foods.
     The researchers suggest to marketers that they target innovative functional food sales to consumers who show a high preference for predictability. These are people who would probably agree with statements such as, “I dislike unpredictable situations and I do not enjoy the uncertainty of going into a new situation without knowing what might happen.” Also, in the marketing messages, emphasize overall healthfulness rather than engineered characteristics.
     The researchers also suggest that marketers take into account the ambivalence and anxiety associated with accepting any innovative item. This same point was made by York University researchers who asked groups of consumers to consider using radically novel products, such as black facial tissue. Study participants preferred a well-known brand of these items to a lesser-known brand and favored items associated with a geographical region with which the consumer identified. The consumers were easing their anxiety by introducing the familiar. Once the study participants employed the additional choice criteria, judgments of the innovative items became more positive.

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Excite Consumers with Nature 

Dominate Anxiety Around Radical Innovations

Augment Political Projection with Introjection

Valuable for the political longevity of an elected official is the ability to assess their voters’ sentiments about issues important to the voters. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the politician agrees with the voters’ views. The politician could recognize the divergence and work to change the voters’ opinions. But anything that disrupts an accurate reading of the constituents’ preferences is a danger. This danger arises because politicians might mistakenly assume that the views they hold are also held by the voters. This was seen in a study by researchers at University of Antwerp, Université Libre de Bruxelles, University of Basel, University of Konstanz, University of Geneva, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, and University of Amsterdam.
     The psychological process responsible for the error is social projection. We all tend to assume that our likes—and to a lesser extent, our dislikes—are shared by those whose opinions we value. Projection generally operates automatically below the level of conscious awareness and is a prevailing human characteristic. The research indicates that politicians are no better than other citizens in avoiding the biases of projection.
     The dangers of projection for an elected official are lessened by the reality that generally the politician does reflect the sentiments of the voters. That’s largely why they were elected, after all. Still, staying aware of possible misperceptions, especially in the face of cultural changes, is valuable. The studies concluded that projection by the politician is stronger toward the partisan supporters of the politician than toward the broader electorate in the politician’s geographic district. If the ground of public opinion shifts, a legislator who is projecting might fail to sense and respond to the changes soon enough.
     Perhaps surprisingly, substantially increasing sensitivity to the bias of projection risks making things worse. The researchers report on a prior study showing how such acute awareness led to politicians then too often mistakenly assuming their policy positions diverged from those of the people who had voted them into office.
     A better remedy is using an awareness of projection to motivate continuing information exchange between a politician and the electorate. A counterpart to projection is the psychological process of introjection, which consists of incorporating the perspectives of others into our own thinking. It’s harder for people to engage in introjection than in projection, but such incorporation of voter opinions on pressing policy issues is necessary for prevailing as an elected official.

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Reflect Carefully on Marketing to the Mirror 

Elect Electability Accuracy

Introduce Inferiority to Move Superiority

To step up your sales of the high-end option, add a choice that’s way down in comparative attractiveness. Such attractiveness is determined by a shopper’s consideration of each item’s desirability—such as the quality of a printer’s output—and feasibility—such as the price of the printer. In ESADE and Stanford University studies, adding a low-desirability low-feasibility alternative to a consideration set moved the consumer’s preferences away from the lower-desirability higher-feasibility option and toward the higher-desirability lower-feasibility option.
     This upscaling effect was seen when study participants were asked to choose between a 30L-capacity $29.99 backpack and a 40L-capacity $39.99 backpack. Participants also given a 30L-capacity $39.99 model to consider were more likely to end up selecting the 40L-capacity $39.99 backpack than were participants not given that third alternative. Parallel results were seen with other study participants asked to select among alternative Bluetooth speakers, hard drives, hotels, or televisions.
     The researchers’ explanation for the upscaling effect is that shoppers find it easier to justify their natural preference for a high-end option when a low-desirability low feasibility alternative—a decoy—is in the consideration set. Other experiments by the researchers showed how the upscaling effect is stronger when the high-end option is positioned physically close to the decoy—such as on the same webpage—and the effect fades away if the shopper is asked to explain their reasoning before choosing.
     There’s evidence from studies at Brigham Young University and Emory University that asking a shopper to set a budget before choosing among differently priced alternatives is another approach to moving the shopper toward selecting a superior-quality, higher-priced alternative. When a shopper sets a limit on what they’ll spend, they’ll screen out alternatives which exceed the budget. The shopper now relaxes their attention to price. This allows the shopper to place higher importance on comparative quality of the alternatives. If there had been many alternatives at the start, a second result of the shopper setting a spending limit is that the set size is reduced. This amplifies the relative quality differences among the remaining choices. The highest quality item will be perceived to be of even higher relative quality, facilitating a justification for purchasing it.
     Consumers prefer to purchase higher quality when all else is equal. Encouraging the shopper to set a purchase budget and then including a clearly inferior alternative in the choice set helps the shopper achieve that objective.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

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Contract with Near-Term Use via Contractions 

Decoy the Indecisive Without Getting Decoyed 

Upgrade Your Upselling

Position Your Extended Warranty Offer

How strange it seemed that immediately after I bought the item, the salesman urged me to recognize the wide range of ways my purchase might fall apart in the foreseeable future.
     It’s what I’m thinking each time I buy a car based on my thorough research and careful consideration of the alternatives, only to have some dealership staff member interrupt my paperwork-signing to pitch an extended warranty. I want to feel good about my high-priced decision, not start doubting. Wouldn’t it be better for a salesman to describe the extended warranty availability as part of making the sale of the durable item? “Each alternative I’ve shown you is an excellent product which comes with a base warranty. To make your purchase decision easier, realize that an extended warranty is also available at a modest additional cost on many of the alternatives.”
     Studies at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and University of Iowa indicate I’m on to something here. Based on their findings, the researchers say that people are more likely to purchase a warranty before committing to a product than after doing so. The explanation is that before committing to purchase, a shopper attends to potential product failure. This is part of the process of comparing alternatives and persuading themselves they’re making a good choice. But after committing to a purchase, the self-reassurance takes the form of over-representing positive aspects of the choice. The purchaser is relatively uninspired to pay extra for an additional warranty.
     Knowing when to make the offer is valuable information for a marketer because extended warranty and extended service contract sales generate high profit margins. Researchers at University of Iowa and University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill report that fewer than 15% of the purchasers end up making claims which exceed the premium fee. Their studies go on to provide sales timing guidance, but on the basis of months rather than the duration of a sales transaction: Consumers are more responsive to price promotions on the warranties when the general economy is weak.
     These studies also analyzed offering an extended warranty to the consumer well after the original item purchase, as the base warranty is moving toward expiration. During both weak and strong macroeconomic conditions, the price promotions are more influential when the duration of the extended warranty coverage is at least as long as the remaining time on the base warranty.

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Rethink the Timing of Reassurance 

Warrant Your Use of Product Warranties 

Make Extended Service Contracts Worthwhile

Tout Limitless Supplies When Limited Variety

A challenge for the small-footprint retail store is persuading shoppers they’ll be able to find within the store the best items for their specifications. Of necessity, a constrained space usually means a more limited variety within each item category than is found in a larger store. A set of studies at HEC-Paris and Oklahoma State University did show how limited variety results in negative supplier evaluations. The researchers attribute this to shopper’s concerns about losing personal control in obtaining a desirable outcome.
     The researchers also find that a retailer can reduce the concerns by highlighting the abundance of those items which are carried in the store. Messages proved effective in the studies were of the format “An abundant supply of each to satisfy all your needs” and “large quantities in stock.” The messages went beyond claiming a moderate supply level. They emphasized an extremely plentiful supply. Perceptions of abundance nourished a sense of personal control which compensated in large part for the loss due to perceptions of limited variety. Shoppers realized they could purchase as many boxes as they desired of each chosen item.
     However, honoring the promise to the shopper of virtually limitless supplies of every item in the store carries its own challenges. A retail outlet might be smaller rather than larger because the owner has limited financial resources. Maintaining abundant inventory consumes money.
     An approach to this dilemma is to position your store as a gnategory killer. The huge retail store can be a category killer. People know that they’ve a high chance of finding whatever brand and model they’re seeking if they come there. The small retail store can be a gnategory killer by focusing on a highly specific niche like sunglasses, batteries, or soda pop.
     A related approach, one described by the researchers, is to tell your shoppers that what you’re offering them has been customized to their characteristics. The shoppers can then enjoy a chief benefit of a small variety to select from—quicker decisions. In one of the studies, participants were told that a pizza shop curated the pizza alternatives to the tastes of the local population, so carried only options catering to the preferences of people in their community. For these participants, reported likelihood of buying a pizza from that shop was the same whether or not the shopper had been told there was an abundant supply of the pizza ingredients.

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Give Shoppers Variety for Control 

Control Out-of-Stock Irritation 

Expand Horizons in Small Retail Spaces 

Make a Splash with Comprehensive Selection