Emote Selectively

Researchers at National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University find that for certain consumers in the world, emotion sells, but for others, strong emotions irritate.
     The researchers coined the term “emotional receptivity” to describe this personality dimension among shoppers. In studies of sales presentations and fashion browsing, participating consumers felt greater enjoyment of the shopping experience and more positive feelings toward the retailer when there was a closer match of the salesperson’s level of emotional expression with the consumer’s degree of emotional receptivity.
     The Singapore/Nanyang researchers developed an inventory for measuring emotional receptivity. You’re unlikely to administer a personality test to each shopper entering your store, so you’ll need another way to do the assessment. Research findings from Universidad Pùblica de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain indicate that a good technique is to monitor the extent to which your shopper uses emotion words themselves.
     With shoppers low in emotional receptivity, a touch of happy emotion might still make a difference. Researchers at University of California-San Diego and University of Michigan offered thirsty study participants a serving of a beverage. Along with this, some of the participants were exposed to a brief image of a frowning face and some to a brief image of a smiling face. The exposure was so brief that any notice of the emotion would almost surely be subconscious. In addition, the exposure of the emotion-laden face occurred along with the person being shown an emotionally neutral face for a long enough time to be consciously perceived.
     The thirsty people shown the smiling face didn’t report feeling much different from those shown the frowning face. However, those shown the smiling face poured more beverage from the pitcher into their cup, drank more from their cup, and were willing to pay about twice as much for the beverage. A smile—even one so brief as to have no conscious effect—made for more motivated consumers.
     Emotional receptivity seems to be a fairly stable characteristic of people, cultivated by both genetics and culture. Still, within each person, it also is affected by the situation. Music and colors in the store can increase or dampen it.
     Store salespersons have emotional receptivity and expressive thresholds themselves, of course. The Singapore/Nanyang researchers hold out their findings as a source of relief for frontline retail employees. It’s stressful, they say, to be expected to display nonstop exuberance to everybody walking by.

Click below for more:
Smile Often
Know How Much Emotion to Deliver
Emphasize Emotions with Older Consumers

Vent Sour Tastes When Surveying Consumers

At the university that had retained my consumer attitude survey services, students were outraged about the housing office. The anger was so great that each time an attitude survey had been administered recently, those students who did answer trash-talked absolutely everything about the housing office’s operations. Because of the universal negative reactions and the low response rate, the university felt unable to accurately prioritize corrective actions. They couldn’t afford to do everything all at once, but where to start?
     As I looked over the students’ comments, I was struck by two things. First, there were surprisingly few. If these housing office consumers were so angry, why weren’t they giving specifics? Second, of the comments there, a high percentage were downright vile. I recall one that cruelly ridiculed the physical appearance of an older housing office staff member. Clearly, I was dealing with a bunch of frustrated consumers.
     I decided to do something unusual: The comments section on a questionnaire is almost always at the end, after the degree-of-agreement questions. I moved it to the start of the questionnaire and allocated lots of room for it. I was figuring that if I gave respondents a chance to vent off their sour moods, I could get some valid responses on the degree-of-agreement items which followed.
     It worked.
     A related sort of remedy was suggested more recently by researchers at Northwestern University. Here the situation could be described as a sour taste about a candy manufacturer. The manufacturer had been found to be engaging in highly immoral business practices. Study participants were asked their opinion of the candy. The researchers found that:

• When consumers who were highly critical of the immoral behavior were not asked about this on the survey, they used their ratings of the candy quality to express displeasure. The candy tended to be rated as being of inferior quality.
• This bias—which could affect whether a retailer carried the line of candy—was eased significantly if respondents were told at the start of the candy quality survey that they’d have the opportunity later to express their thoughts about issues other than the candy quality.

     The bias did not disappear completely. I believe it might have if the comments section had been at the start of the questionnaire.
     Negative feelings are relevant to you, retailer. When shoppers express them, know what it is they’re really talking about.

Click below for more:
Phrase Consumer Survey Questions Carefully
Interpret Survey Results as a Retailer

Pinpoint Feelings in Imagining of Benefits

Having shoppers imagine the benefits of using your product or service substantially increases the potential for making a sale. Researchers at New Mexico State University, Arizona State University, and Claremont Graduate School described to neighborhood residents features of a newly available cable TV service. Then about half the residents were asked to imagine themselves using the features. The remaining residents were not asked to imagine usage.
     Some weeks later, sales representatives from the cable company solicited the neighborhood’s residents for orders. Of those who had only heard about the features, about 20% chose to subscribe. Of those who had been asked to imagine using the features, almost 50% chose to subscribe.
     Building on findings like these, researchers at National University of Singapore and Chinese University of Hong Kong discovered that a crucial element in the imagining is having the shopper tune into their personal emotions rather than staying just with their beliefs about what will happen when they use the product.
     Here are some tips:

• Having mirrors in the shopping area helps pinpoint personal feelings for a consumer. One reason is that mirrors cause us to pause and look. Another reason is that the reflection in the mirror helps a person sense the emotions they’re experiencing.
• Since mirrors aren’t everywhere, the Singapore/Hong Kong researchers suggest using self-focused words like “I” and “my” in ads and signage. Other researchers recommend that if signage shows pictures of people using the merchandise or service, you include some people who resemble your target audience in age, ethnicity, likely physical possessions, and so on. This makes the imagining easier than when there is no plausible match.
• Give the shopper the minimum amount of technical information necessary to set up the imagining. Then be ready to provide more details if the shopper asks. The power of imagining is greater when a person fills in their own blanks.
• Use vivid language designed to stimulate the senses: “As you enter your room, you’ll be tempted to take off your shoes immediately so your feet can sink into the plush carpeting.”
• Allowing the shopper to handle a product, hear sounds associated with circumstances in which the product would be used, and smell any fragrances associated with use of the product or service will all facilitate imagination that can be focused on feelings.
• Separate requests to imagine from requests to analyze product features.

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

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Ask Shoppers to Imagine Usage Benefits
Help Shoppers Use Their Imagination

Update Perspectives on Daily Deals

Major players, like GroupOn and LivingSocial. Smaller players, like DailyDeal and Woot. Giants ready to descend, like Facebook and Google. Countless newspapers looking to reverse sinking advertising revenue.
     It’s social couponing, that promotion tactic in which a substantial discount is offered to people who are told the offer is activated only when a certain number of others sign up for it. Generally, a new deal is featured each day.
     Findings from an April 2011 survey conducted by Lightspeed Research lead me to update my shopper psychology recommendations to you about daily deals.
     In my opinion, the Lightspeed respondent sample of 3,300 consumers was not fully representative of the entire target population for daily deals. Still, Lightspeed is very careful to ensure the accuracy of the data they collect. I recommend you consider the percentages below as good approximations:

• Set the terms to encourage additional expenditures. About 60% of those who used a daily deal spent more than what was covered by the discount ceiling.
• Tempt repeat business. Only six months ago, many retailing consultants were warning that social couponing attracted only bargain hunters, who would quickly jump to another merchant as soon as you charged your regular prices. But 65% of the Lightspeed respondents who took a daily deal said they returned later to the retailer. Give each purchaser of the daily deal a coupon for a smaller discount on a subsequent visit by a deadline date that fits the nature of your business’s offerings. Notice I said purchaser, not user, of the daily deal. About 23% of the Lightspeed daily deal purchasers said they had failed to use the discount before the expiration date. It’s nice that you’ve use of their money without needing to provide a product or service. But you want to avoid bad feelings associated with your store. A small sale following a large sale helps accomplish that.
• Recognize that, for now, the majority of your customers and potential customers aren’t using daily deals. About 75% of the Lighthouse panel said they have not purchased a daily deal during the past year. Be sure your services to your current customers aren’t compromised by services to the coupon customers. Tell your current customers about the coupon offer and encourage them to enroll online for their next visit. Have sufficient staff during the time of the offer, which often means increasing your staffing.

Click below for more:
Fine-Tune Your Social Couponing
Guard Your Promotions Against Being Gamed
Keep Discount Conditions Strict Enough
Follow a Big Sales Event with a Smaller One

Mind Your Ps & Qs in Reviews

Whether you’re selling green peas in a grocery store or hotel rooms online, the quality of grammar in what is said and written will cue the consumer about how much to trust the recommendations.
     Researchers at New York University evaluated the various factors in online product reviews that influence a shopper’s decision to purchase a specific item. They discovered that among the more important ones were the ease of reading the review—which increased when the grammar was correct—and the accuracy of spelling in the review. Demand for a hotel was greater when reviews on TripAdvisor and Travelocity got a good grade for grammar from the researchers. Sales of items on Amazon were higher when the reviews would have received a nod of approval from your former English teacher.
     The researchers found this to be true even with reviews that included what might be considered criticism of the product or service. Well-phrased critiques build credibility. You want site visitors to trust the positive information in the reviews.
     Research at Stanford University finds that a product review is especially effective when the person qualifies themselves as an expert and then presents their conclusions with a bit of uncertainty. One way for a reviewer to qualify themselves as an expert is to give specific points of comparison of the product with alternatives that would fulfill an equivalent function. Therefore, in encouraging customers to post reviews, say something like, “Please describe some of the ways this item compares more favorably and less favorably to alternatives a shopper might consider.”
     Consider whether you’d like to tidy the grammar and spelling in those reviews without changing the content. Knowing the importance of proper language to credibility with shoppers, online retailer Zappos has been doing this sort of cleanup with customer reviews that appear on the Zappos site. I would expect consumers to be much more likely to appreciate than to mind that.
     As the old English expression urging proper language usage puts it, “Mind your Ps and Qs.”

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

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Encourage Balanced Customer Reviews
Make Your Product Reviews Credible
Sell More by Being Less Certain

Break Ties When There’s Limited Selection

A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article discusses the success of stores that have a business model based on limiting the selection of products available to shoppers. Because the store footprint is smaller and inventory management is easier, retailers who offer a limited selection can keep prices down. The Post-Dispatch article uses an Aldi grocery store as an example. Each store carries about 1,400 SKUs, compared to about 30,000 in a typical supermarket.
     A difficulty with having a limited selection is that shoppers are called upon to make tradeoffs. This can lead to them getting frozen into indecision. Consumers in Western countries resist being confined in their choices.
     Here are some ways to head off and unfreeze the ties:

• Diversify what you offer within the limited selection. Aldi carries a health-oriented line called “Fit & Active” and a gourmet “Grandessa Signature” line. Just the presence of this diversity gives the shopper a feeling of more control.
• Consumer researchers talk about helping customers develop a consumption vocabulary so the customers can better describe to the salesperson what they're looking for. The vocabulary allows the shopper to appreciate the differences among products. To someone without the words, it all seems the same.
• Add a gift to accompany one of the alternatives. Researchers at University of Chicago and Columbia University find that with financial investment decisions, it even works to offer a small gift with both of two alternatives because this moves the decision toward the riskier choice, breaking the tie. The researchers call this the “mere token effect.”
• Offer a clearly inferior alternative. A customer comes into an electronics store to buy a printer. The customer narrows the choices to two, but can’t decide and finally says she wants to look at other stores. The salesperson replies, “May I show you one more model that I think would help you decide? I hate for you to need to go shopping somewhere else.” The salesperson presents a model from a manufacturer that does a lot of advertising, but has recently not received high ratings for their printers. If asked, store staff don’t give the model high recommendations. Still, they carry the model because people ask for it based on familiarity with the advertising. Researchers at University of Toronto report that the introduction of an inferior alternative in this way often dislodges a tie and results in a purchase decision.

Click below for more:
Give a Vocabulary for Richer Shopping
Dislodge Indecision with New Choice