Unwrap Blind Box Collectible Concerns

How are a bubble gum pack, a storage locker, and a Birchbox alike?
     They’ve all been marketed as blind boxes—containers purchased without the customer knowing what specific items are inside. Baseball player cards were first packaged with bubble gum in the 1920’s by Fleer and Topps brands with the objective of increasing gum sales to kids. On A&E’s “Storage Wars,” adults bid on abandoned storage units at auctions before knowing what's inside. A Birchbox subscriber receives a mystery assortment of curated beauty enhancement products each month.
     University of Newcastle and University of Sydney researchers explored the type of blind box purchases in which the contained items are collectibles for the buyer. What these researchers documented is an addictive loop of impulsive purchases. The researchers report that the addiction potential is high enough to have caught the attention of regulatory agencies.
     Consumers are drawn to blind box collectibles via the appeal of uncertainty and the urge for completion. As to uncertainty, in a University of Chicago study, people worked harder for a bag containing either two or four chocolates than did another group told the bag had four chocolates. The tickle of ambiguity stimulated these study participants to act.
     The thrill of the tease is an aspect of this. Show shoppers a gift box being slowly opened, and their evaluations of what’s inside the box will be more positive than if you just showed them the item. The unboxing video genre has gained notable numbers of YouTube followers.
     The pleasure-from-watching-the-striptease is so compelling that researchers from Chinese University of Hong Kong saw it even with an empty box. In this case, the observers of the unveiling liked the empty box itself more, on average, than an equivalent set of consumers who were only shown the box.
     As to the drive to complete the whole set, blind box collectible purchases might be compared to slot machine gambling. Because the purchaser doesn’t know what specific items in the set will be acquired, they could continue buying in hopes of filling in what’s missing in their collection. This behavior could easily become economically imprudent and potentially addictive.
     In your own use of blind box collectible marketing, stay alert for any need to nudge a compulsive buyer toward counseling just as a casino operator would with their clientele. Also consider recommending collection groups where your customers could trade their duplicates while socializing.

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Tickle with Uncertainty 

Cross to Cross-Selling with Collecting Urges 

Hide Item Features from Shoppers Sometimes 

Stumble Upon Serendipity as a Sales Tool 

Compulsive Buying Disorder. Okay, Laugh

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Complete the Teasers if Charging for More

When I post on Bluesky with a live link in the Bluesky post to one of my RIMtailing blog posts, the title of the blog post and the first 25 words or so often appear in the Bluesky post. This teaser almost always ends in the middle of a sentence and often ends in the middle of a word. My intent is to have the teaser draw people for whom the topic is relevant into looking at the extended blog post. I’m aiming for the appeal of curiosity and the urge for completion.
     Evidence is this works, according to studies by a team of researchers from TBS Business School, ALDI Data & Analytics Services GmbH, Copenhagen Business School, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Stockholm School of Economics.
     But the research also says this is true largely because there’s no fee to look at the complete content. If I required payment to go beyond teasers, that would quite legitimately activate in the reader a perception I’m trying to sell them something. Such persuasion knowledge, in turn, arouses sales resistance, making it substantially less likely the reader would choose to access the content.
     Consumers dislike the feeling they’re being manipulated. Any irritation would be aggravated by a teaser which ends in the middle of a word, sentence, or video scene. The researchers recommend that if you charge a fee for accessing full content, you end the teaser with a complete thought.
     Now at the other extreme of telling consumers too little is the possible risk of teasing them with too much, such as with spoilers in movie reviews. Researchers at University of Houston and Canada’s Western University defined “spoiler intensity” as the degree to which information in the spoiler reduces uncertainty about a central theme in the experience of watching the movie. Then, using a sample of 993 movies, they statistically analyzed the relationship between spoiler intensity on IMDB—the most popular movie review site—and box office revenues for the first eight weeks of the movie’s release.
     There was a positive relationship between spoiler intensity and box office revenue. The relationship was higher for movies in limited release, which supports the idea that the uncertainty reduction accounts for the value of spoilers. Spoilers increase the credibility of marketer claims and consumer reviews, so they’re of most use with relatively unknown items. In these circumstances, it seems like there’s little need to worry about spoiling the audience. Spoilers, in fact, increase the attraction.

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Spoil Your Audience with Spoilers 

Unwrap Purchase Alternatives Seductively 

Cruise Through When People Suspect Selling

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Request Attribute Ratings of the Subpar

There are many ways in which a purchased experience can fall short of the purchaser’s definition of perfection. Particular attributes might have flaws or the way in which they all fit together isn’t quite right. Researchers at University of Alberta and University of Pennsylvania find that numerical ratings of subpar experiences are more positive if the customer has also been asked to evaluate each of the attributes.
     In one of the studies, participants were asked to remember a restaurant or rideshare experience which had both good and bad attributes. All of the participants were then asked to give a single overall rating of their experience using a five-star scale. Some of the participants were also asked to give a rating on a five-star scale for the attributes. With the restaurant, this included food, service, ambiance, and value. With the rideshare, the attributes were driving quality, driver quality, vehicle quality, pick-up/drop-off locations, and navigation/route.
     Those who also rated the attributes gave somewhat higher overall ratings. In other studies, the researchers found similar results for airflight, Airbnb, dental care, and painting gallery experiences.
     The design of their studies allowed the researchers to attribute this positivity push to people’s preference for being nice to service providers. Unless the experience was thoroughly terrible, customers who rated one or more attributes of the experience down felt a need to avoid doubling down on the criticism when they assigned the overall rating.
     Shoppers pay more attention to overall ratings than to attribute ratings because they like to simplify their decision making. So it’s logical for marketers to prefer positivity in received ratings. Asking customers to rate attributes along with the overall rating helps accomplish this. The increase in ratings in the studies was equivalent to about only a third of a star on a five-star rating scale, but the researchers point out this translates to roughly a 30% chance of changing a two-star rating into a three-star rating, for example.
     Still, the positivity push is a distortion from the actual customer opinion. While expecting our shoppers to look at overall ratings, we should peruse the attribute ratings so we can meaningfully improve the experiences for our future customers. A caution here from the findings is to check that your list of attributes covers all important aspects of the experience and that you ask each rater to give an assessment on all the attributes.

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Mean More with Mean Ratings 

Reveal Limitations of Mystery Shoppers 

Dial In to Dialectical Thinking

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Distract Complainants from Feeling Ostracized

We’d like to promptly and carefully respond to every complaint from customers. Constraints in time and money often prevent us from doing so. Researchers at University of Surrey and University of Southampton identify problems caused by this shortfall and then indicate two low-cost methods for easing those problems.
     The innovative approach of the researchers was based on recognizing that a customer might have their complaint resolved in the physical or online presence of other customers with complaints. What are the reactions of observers whose complaints are not resolved?
     The researchers’ answer is that these observers generally perceive they’ve been socially excluded. Social exclusion produces the painful feeling of ostracism. A common reaction of an ostracized individual is striving to restore control of the situation. In the case of an observer who sees another’s complaint being resolved, the effort to restore control can consist of escalating the extent or the intensity of their own complaints.
     The problems are aggravated if someone who registers a complaint later has their complaint addressed prior to that of the observer who complained earlier. This could easily happen with a situation such as a cancelled airflight. For one thing, many complainants will descend on the limited number of staff simultaneously. For another thing, some of the remedies, such as rebooking on a frequently flown route, are quicker to arrange. Still, one takeaway from the research study is to, insofar as possible, adhere to first-in-first-out addressing of complaints.
     The other low-cost method for easing the problems consists of distraction. In the study, participants were asked to imagine a situation in which they returned to a gym to complain about being overcharged for enrollment and while waiting for a resolution, observed another customer registering the same complaint. Those study participants assigned to complete a distracting activity during the wait reported less upset when served out of turn compared to reports from those participants not assigned to complete the activity. The activity consisted of slowly paging through a slide presentation which showed what to eat before workouts. The researchers say this helped because the activity distracted from preoccupation with perceptions of exclusion.
     Resolving a complaint is an opportunity for the organization to build good will. Don’t allow perceptions of exclusion to spoil the gains.

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Open Wide to Calm Complaint Intensity 

Prioritize Private Complainers 

Compensate Group Service Failure Collectively

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Reserve Brand Nicknames for Consumer Use

BMW becomes Beamer. Rolex becomes Rollie. Christian Louboutin becomes Loubi. 

     Consumers might enjoy using a nickname to refer to your store or product. This does not mean you should use that nickname in your marketing to prospective customers. A team of researchers from Western University, Stockton University, and University of Massachusetts warns that if, for example, Bloomingdale’s were to refer to themselves as Bloomie’s in their ads, the customer-conceived moniker could compromise Bloomingdale’s ability to charge premium prices.
     The researchers show that when a brand blatantly co-opts a nickname created by its customers, the brand yields some authority over the consumer, and this dilutes the power of the brand in the eyes of consumers. In the studies, participants were less receptive to a price premium when Beemer was used for a BMW, expressed less interest in purchasing a Rolex when the nickname Rollie was used, and moved toward other luxury brands when Loubi was used in place of Christian Louboutin.
     This effect held for non-luxury brands, too. Use of Chevy rather than Chevrolet reduced social media marketing likes and shares. Tarzhay got fewer click-throughs than Target. Purchase intentions were lower for Wally World than for Walmart.
     I’ll add to the researchers’ argument the idea that brand authority is compromised when, as is common, nicknames conceived by consumers are cute modifications of the actual name. The diminutives can imply the consumer’s dealing with a child who lacks the power of a mature adult.
     Exceptions to the diminutive formatting are nicknames conceived by consumers to ridicule the brand, and there’s little need for a marketer to be cautioned against co-opting those. Starbucks is unlikely to refer to themselves as Fourbucks or Neiman Marcus to advertise “Just call us Needless Markup.”
     Because the cautions are based on the value of a brand’s portrayal of power, the researchers hypothesized that the cautions would hold less strongly when the brand succeeds by emphasizing warmth over competence or when the marketing campaign touts how the brand’s doing a social good. These hypotheses were validated in a study using the name versus nickname of a fictitious charity and in a study using the marketing message “[Starbucks/Starbies] supports the disability community. It is an inclusive space at [Starbucks/Starbies].”
     The most important add-on to the general finding, though, is that nicknames for brands and items created by consumers are good for business when being used by the consumers.

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Combine Competence with Warmth 

Spark Nicknames in the Name of Love

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Fizz Fizz to Generate Effectiveness Perception

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is,” the jingle hitting the airwaves in 1975 has been credited with doubling sales of sponsor Alka-Seltzer. The visual accompanying the jingle showed tablets of the antacid, which had been tossed into a glass of water, bubbling away as evidence of beneficial action.
     The effervescence occurred outside the body, before the bubbles were swallowed. Researchers at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Université Laval, and University of Massachusetts find sensations experienced on or in the body also can convince the consumer of product effectiveness. In analyzing results from a survey project, they concluded that fizzing, tingling, cooling, or heating sensations during usage improve product ratings.
     In one of their studies, participants read an ad which stated, “Introducing HerbLife Balm. Our yellow balm is made from herbs such as turmeric and prai. To use the product, rub and massage a small amount on the affected area. This balm improves your physical performance.” The participants were then instructed to apply the balm to their arm. For some of the participants, the balm had been formulated to produce a tingling sensation shortly after application. For the other participants, the balm formulation was identical except that the ingredient producing tingling was omitted.
     Those participants experiencing the tingles were more likely to accept an offer to actually purchase the product at the conclusion of the session.
     Another in the set of studies found that people using a tingle-producing gel claiming to improve physical performance actually did improve their dumbbell lifting performance to a greater extent than an equivalent group of people using the same gel lacking the sensation-producing ingredient. The researchers’ explanation is that the sensory signaling generated a perception that the gel was transferring benefits to the body, which in itself energized the body to perform better. It’s of note that the gel used in this study contained no ingredients which had been shown to independently improve physical performance.
     The implications of these results apply most clearly to what consumer researchers call credence products. These are items where the evidence of effectiveness is not obviously clear to the user. A hammer is not a credence product. Pain-relieving balms, performance-enhancing gels, antacids, vitamin supplements, vaccines, and the like are credence products. Manufacturers could benefit by adding to their credence products an ingredient which generates a stimulating sensation. Marketers could benefit by featuring sensation-producing credence products.

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Talk to Multiple Senses with New Products 

Confirm Self-Service Transactions Soundly 

Post Dramatic Tales for Post-Experience Goods

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Investigate Insulting’s Populist Persuasiveness

Although there’s past evidence people generally dislike incivility, politicians who lob cutting insults at their opponents are winning elections. Populism may be central to unraveling this paradox, according to researchers at University of Lausanne, University of Amsterdam, and University of Bern.
     The distinguishing view in populist sentiments is that society is divided into the common people, who are generally virtuous, and the elite, who generally intend to exploit the common people. The common people must continually be on guard that their welfare is not ravaged by the elite. Incivility serves as a way to challenge the norms of the elites, demand attention, and express frustration. With this in mind, the researchers hypothesized that uncivility toward the opposition, such as obscene insults, will help persuade people who are high in populist attitudes.
     To test this hypothesis, a group of U.S. consumers was recruited for a study. About 44% self-identified as Democrats, 27% as Republicans, 24% as Independent, and the remainder as none of those three designations.
     The study participants were administered an inventory to measure their degree of agreement with populist views. They also were asked their opinion on the topic of requiring parental consent for gender transition in teens, then presented arguments either for or against, and again asked their opinion. For some of the respondents, the arguments had been presented with a courteous view of the opposition (“I know some might disagree” or “I can respect that some people may think differently”). For the remaining respondents, the view of the opposition was designed to be rude (“I don't care what other people think. It’s fucking obvious” or “Every other opinion is just bullshit”). The degree of attitude change about the parental consent topic was calculated.
     As the researchers predicted, respondents reflecting populist views were persuaded to a greater extent by the arguments when those arguments were accompanied by rude statements about the opposition.
     However, the pattern of findings was different in a parallel study conducted with respondents in Switzerland, a culture which, compared to the U.S., leans more toward consensus than polarization. In Switzerland, there was no evidence that incivility was more persuasive than civility among people with strong populist attitudes. Indeed, it appeared the rude messages backfired when the message aligned with the Swiss respondent’s initial view—that is, a higher rejection of the supporting arguments.
     In applying these findings, then, attend to cultural differences in consensus-polarization.

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Persuade Populists 

Damn Positive Item Reviews 

Constrain Politician Parodies to Controllables 

Endorse Policy, Not Character, Political Attacks 

Praise Your Brand Competitors

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Raise Referral Success Via Bigger Devices

Any organization experiencing customer turnover benefits from having current recipients of products or services personally suggest to others that they also give their business to the organization. And every organization experiences customer turnover.
     Solicit referrals to both strong and weak links: “Please recommend us to your colleagues, and recommend those colleagues talk about us to their colleagues.”
     Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg conclude that when you ask a current customer to make a referral, you also encourage them to use a laptop or personal computer, rather than a smartphone, to compose and send the request to each referred individual. That’s because referrals made via smartphone tend to be shorter and contain less positive content than those made on the larger devices, but longer, more positive recommendations stimulate better follow-through by the referral recipient.
     Those inferior characteristics of smartphone-based messaging can be attributed to how the small size of the screen and keyboard on the device make it more challenging to compose the referral. At the same time, the portability and ubiquity of smartphones could easily result in a greater number of referral messages sent out in response to your request than if the referring customer waits to do it on a laptop or PC. In accord with this, another of the researchers’ recommendations is to make it as easy as possible for a referral message to be completed on a smartphone. Auto-completion and pre-formulated text modules help here. Actually, these also could be helpful for composing a referral on a laptop or PC.
     Studies at City University of New York and Pennsylvania State University indicate that what you’d best include in any pre-formatted text modules depends on the degree of familiarity the recipient of the referral message currently has with the proposed supplier. If they’ve had few if any dealings with the organization previously, the best text should be thoroughly positive. This relaxes perceptions of risk generated by the prospect of transacting with an unknown.
     But if the recommended supplier is already well-known to the referral message recipient, text which qualifies the referrer’s expertise in making the recommendation is more important than whether the proposed supplier is described as flawless. In addition, researchers at Italy’s LUISS University and University of Bari suggest that in this latter situation, the text be more abstract than concrete, describing general upsides and concerns in doing business with the supplier rather than giving detailed examples.

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Minimize Customer Turnover 

Cultivate Referred Customers 

Wise Up by Tapping Smartphones 

Open Wide to Calm Complaint Intensity 

Slant Referral Rewards Toward the Referred

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Explain Algorithms to Affected Individuals

Convincing a consumer to accept an AI-based unfavorable decision about them requires establishing trust in the algorithm by describing why the AI tool made the decision. To address this demand, organizations can provide, along with a decision, an explanation of how the machine logic reached its conclusion.
     Researchers at University of Calgary and Mount Royal University were interested in what characterizes the best of such post-hoc explanations. Their studies established that ones which include concrete, feasible steps the consumer can take to positively influence future outcomes were especially effective in preserving positive attitudes toward the decision and the marketer. The researchers name them sensitivity-based explanations because they describe how much the values of specific variables would have to change in order to alter the decision outcome.
     A scenario used in the studies was for a car insurance applicant who did not receive the best rate. A sensitivity-based explanation was, “If 10% or less of your driving took place at night, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier. If your average miles per month were 700 or less, you would have qualified for the cheapest tier.”
     The positivity of study participants’ ratings of fairness and of intention to do business with the insurance company were higher than for study participants given a case-based explanation: “This decision was based on thousands of similar cases from the past. For example, a similar case to yours is a previous customer: She was 38 years old, with 18 years of driving experience, drove 850 miles per month, occasionally exceeded the speed limit, and 25% of her trips took place at night. Claire was involved in one accident in the following year.”
     The researchers are suggesting that the marketer describe the logic of the particular decision. They are not suggesting that the marketer attempt to explain the entire logic of the AI model. This latter would almost surely overwhelm the customer with details. It also might reveal the marketer’s trade secrets or allow the customer to subsequently game the algorithm.
     I’ll add to those reasons the fact that the entire logic of the AI model may be unknown to the marketer. Aside from the challenge of earning trust from the consumer, the complexity of machine learning—AI systems which learn on their own beyond the data they’re originally fed—readily results in marketers questioning whether to grant trust. Marketers want decision-making transparency, too.

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Relax Guardedness with Gricean Norms 

Scotch Faux Explanations to Explanation Foes

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Utilize Imagination of Consuming Units

Studies at Michigan State University, Baylor University, and Virginia Tech indicate that “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $16.00” will sell better than “A Multipack of Four Body Washes for $15.30” at an equivalent store in another town.
     A potential explanation for this is how a $16.00 price is simpler for the consumer’s brain to process than is a $15.30 price. But the researcher’s explanation is that the multipack’s easily-divisible price of $16.00 by its quantity of four draws attention from the whole bundle to each unit in the multipack. This facilitates consumption visions, such as each $4.00 body wash being used by multiple family members or in multiple locations, situations, and times. Consequently, buying this multipack is more easily justified than buying a multipack whose price is not easily divisible by its quantity, even though $15.30 is a lower amount.
     The researchers also found this effect with multipacks of six tissue boxes, eight toothbrushes, and eleven bags of cashews.
     Divisibility and consumption visions also play a part in how customers eat from multipacks. People eat less from what’s in a big package than from what’s in a set of small packages containing the same quantity as what’s in the big package. Researchers at Technical University of Lisbon and at Tilburg University in the Netherlands found that people hesitant about eating a food were more likely to overcome their hesitations when presented with small packages than when presented the equivalent amount in a large package.
     In addition, the people who got started on the small packages ended up eating more than did those who dug into the large package. The participants said they had believed small packages would help them limit their consumption. The opposite proved to be true. When faced with an additional small package, the dieter says, “Oh, it would be only a little bit more.” The explanation has less to do with the degree to which eating from a small versus large package sates hunger.
     Still, studies at Hofstra University and Baruch College find that consuming the entire contents of a single serving package gives more of a feeling of fulfillment than consuming the equivalent amount, and therefore not the entire contents, from a multi-serving package. And it applies to medicine, not only food. Patients feel a two-pill dose has been more effective when taking them from a two-pill container than from a twelve-pill container.

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Hit Shoppers with a Two-by-Four 

Stimulate Consumption Visions with Ads 

Serve Singular Satisfaction 

Bargain for Good Value via Price Primacy

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Spend Consideration on Money versus Points

Many customer loyalty programs allow a member to use accumulated points to acquire items which also could be purchased from the marketer with money. Researchers at University of Calgary, The University of Western Ontario, and University of Georgia were interested in what determines which of the two currencies the customer will choose to spend.
     This matters because there are arguments for preferring our customers use their points. For instance, the researchers report prior studies showing that the action of redeeming points motivates further sales. But there are circumstances where we’d prefer to have customers build their point total for future use and give us additional cash income now.
     The researchers hypothesized that what is central to a customer’s decision whether to use their points or their money is the difference in how people conceptualize the two. Consumers tend to think of specific, relatively small dollar amounts in concrete terms, with a focus on the feasibility of the expenditure and on the gain in the short term. We’re accustomed to spending money and are able to define its value across a range of contexts.
     By contrast, people conceptualize loyalty program points in more abstract ways. For one thing, the value of a point is determined by the specific marketer so is hard for the consumer to concretely define. For another thing, the accumulation of points usually occurs in ways less direct than with how money is obtained. We get points while our mind is on making a purchase, not on the fruits of our labor, and we might be given bonus points by the marketer for reasons we don’t fully understand. Thinking about points carries the hypotheticals of thinking about the future.
     This reasoning, validated by the researchers’ studies, leads to recommendations: 

• When you prefer customers spend their money rather than their points, offer items which are available promptly and are easy to use. 
• When you prefer customers spend their points, offer items which are of highly desirable quality, with less attention to the practicality of the item. 
• When you prefer customers spend their money, offer abundant concrete details about the items. 
• When you prefer customers spend their points, offer experience items, such as concert tickets and hotel stays.

     Clearly, there are additional considerations for consumers. For example, they would be much more likely to use up their points if learning those points will expire very soon.

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Profit from Status with Loyal Customers 

Grace with Loyalty Point Expiration Extensions 

Vary Velocity for Loyalty Program Motivation 

Contract with Near-Term Use via Contractions

Realize Realities of Cause-Related Marketing

In cause-related marketing (CRM) promotions, a marketer pledges to donate a small portion of sales revenues to a nonprofit organization or cause. Past studies say such promotions improve brand attitudes and purchase intentions. But while taking note of those conclusions, researchers at Vienna University of Economics and Business, University of Hamburg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and University of Groningen say that the conditions under which the studies were conducted are not sufficiently representative of the typical conditions under which marketers conduct these promotions.
     The most common use of CRM promotions is by marketers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), such as in grocery stores, where a shopper is choosing from a multitude of alternatives under time pressure. The vast majority of past studies, however, have been conducted in lab or field settings where participants are choosing among a few alternatives with ample time to carefully consider them all.
     In their own study, the researchers analyzed 63 actual CRM promotions including a range of 20 grocery and drugstore product categories. The average duration of the promotions was 11 weeks, and the average donation amount was about 3% of the product price.
     The average sales lift from the promotions was about 5% per week. But the most successful of the promotions accounted for the realities of FMCG contexts: The shopper should want to buy the particular product for reasons other than the charitable contribution. Sales lift can more than double when the brand is a market leader in the category or the item is priced below the alternatives in the category. The sales lift also was greater for categories with few alternatives and when the price differences for equivalent items were small.
     The combination of contribution to a charity with discount for the customer was also explored in a Temple University, Aalto University, Hanken Swedish School of Economics, and Sichuan University study. Analysis of results showed that a moderate discount in this situation works better than no discount or a deep discount. The moderate discount used for the studies was 30% and the deep discount was 50%. In discussing their results, the researchers say a discount in the range of 10% to 30%—more than only 3%—would be best for increasing sales.
     Why doesn’t a deep discount boost item sales as much as a moderate one? Because the deep discount erases the motivation of feeling charitable. People are buying for the price alone.

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Double Down on Cause Marketing 

Cause Donations to Enhance Business Credit

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