Sell Happiness

Your mission is to contradict old expertise from William & Mary College. Quite old expertise. In 1792, the proverb “Money can’t buy happiness” made its first academically documented American print appearance. It was in William & Mary College Quarterly.
     We’d like our shoppers to buy happiness, using their money or monetary equivalents for the purchase. In the U.S., at least, it’s the patriotic duty of retail professionals during the election season. Our Declaration of Independence promises us “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
     However, as researchers from University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and MIT point out, the nature of happiness differs among the consumers to whom we’ll want to sell it. The researchers, after collecting questionnaire responses, conducting laboratory experiments, and analyzing diaries, concluded that a principle distinction is between the instances in which people find happiness in excitement and instances in which they find happiness in calmness.
     We’ll want to be ready to, first, determine which our shopper is looking for and, second, provide it. Here’s a tip for those two parts: Compared to the calmness contingent, those looking for excitement tend to be younger and more focused on the future than on what’s happening right now. In the studies, younger subjects preferred more stimulating choices in tea and music. They discerned differences in bottled water alternatives and went for the livelier ones.
     But sometimes, it is the young and those focused on what’s happening right now who find happiness in calmness. A while back, Ben & Jerry's ice cream shops introduced customers to a special selection of new flavors. With names like Chocolate Therapy, Apple-y Ever After, and The Last Straw, these flavors were not designed to stimulate. No, the Ben & Jerry’s folks intended the new flavors to soothe.
     Ben & Jerry’s had gotten a bunch of input about what an entire sorority had named their “breakup ice cream brand of choice.” The ice cream shops were ready to lift the spirits of their recently-dumped customers.
     On the other hand, older consumers may be looking for excitement because that’s what their younger consumption companions seek. These older consumers want to buy experiences which include family and friends. Happiness comes from spending money to share exciting times.
     Let’s sell it to all of them. As retail professionals, let us transform the 1792 quote into, “Whoever said money can't buy happiness just didn't know where to shop.”

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Meditate on Happiness 
Lift the Spirits of Your Customers 
Offer Family-Oriented Experiences

Head On In To Portray Power Products

Consumers who seek power products such as red meat and sport utility vehicles like head-on portrayals.
     Researchers at Cornell University and University of Michigan showed some study participants pictures of SUVs facing directly toward the viewer, while others were shown side views of the vehicles. The consumers seeing the head-on perspective gave higher average ratings of the SUV on words like “dominant” and “powerful.” Then another set of study participants, asked to assess the status and power of the SUV’s owner, were more likely to say “high status, high power” if shown the head-on view of the vehicle than if shown the side view.
     When the same experiments were done with pictures of family sedans, there were no differences in the degree of rated power for the car or for the owners. The conclusion: People seeking the product associated with power will get more interested if the view is head-on.
     A verbal head-on, in the form of a heads-up, also can make a difference. A team of researchers from France, Australia, and the U.S. told study participants they’d be given either a beef sausage roll or a vegetarian roll to eat. But those tricky researchers had lied to half the participants, who actually were served the other entrée from the one they were promised.
     One group of those participants granted a high rating to what they ate, regardless of whether they actually ate the meat or vegetable version, as long as they thought it was meat. What does this have to do with valuing power? Unlike the veggie fans, these meat elitists showed up on psychological testing as embracing values of power and strength.

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Sell Benefits to Fit Shoppers’ Values 
Bow Down Before the Shopper’s Power

Play Full with the Sales Potential of “Playful”

Researchers at the U.K.’s Bournemouth University explored the role of playfulness with innovative consumers. Here is my application of their findings to the world of retailing:

• Innovative consumers are of special value to retailers because market mavens tend to have innovative personalities. Market mavens are a special type of opinion leader. Rather than considering themselves expert advisors on only certain retail products and services, market mavens counsel others about the whole shopping experience and go on to recommend specific stores. 
• Innovative consumers enjoy shopping experiences which include playfulness. If you sell products which attract state-of-the-art or creative thinking, accommodate people who want to play around with the items and want to be playful with store staff. 
• Playful activities are characterized as being spontaneous, inventive, and changeable. Retailers wanting to provide for playfulness will want to regularly introduce novel products and rotate assignments in ways that allow for changing interactions with staff. 
• Even innovative shoppers may hold back on the opportunities to be playful until they become somewhat familiar with the merchandise and the store. Don’t assume that an early hesitation indicates a lack of interest in play. 
• Some retailers and researchers have said that showering a shopper with a variety of items all at once will encourage the sort of playfulness which increases the probability of making a sale. However, because facing more items means taking more time to gain familiarity with each, this showering suggestion doesn’t wash. 

     Giving the innovative consumer opportunities to play doesn’t assure a sale, though. Because of the flexible thinking of the innovator, the play might satisfy, on its own, whatever was motivating the purchase.
     For instance, there’s the stick. In year 2008, the stick was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, headquartered in Rochester, New York. Thus, the stick joined the likes of Tonka Trucks, Mr. Potato Head, and Barbie, each one an inductee from an earlier year.
     A plain stick. Not a pogo stick, a hockey stick, or a pool stick. Each of those others could be considered a plaything to purchase. But as the National Toy Hall of Fame induction announcement makes clear, the plain stick could fill in. For an innovative consumer, the stick becomes a sword, a baton, a big league slugger’s baseball bat, or some other variety of magic wand. In the hands of the playful artist, sticks are a foundation for collages, sculptures, and structures.

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Court Market Mavens for Social Media 
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Discover What the Gift-Giver Expects in Giving

Gift givers have expectations. If those expectations are met well, the purchaser is ready to share credit with you for that.
     Some expectations concern what the giver’s and the recipient’s friends and family will think about the gift. Does it seem to be expensive enough to fit the occasion? Is it overly intimate or not intimate enough? What message about the relationship between the giver and the receiver does the gift portray?
     What friends and family will think about the gift is highly important to adolescents, according to researchers at Temple University, Jerusalem College of Technology, and University of Haifa. Teens use gifting to influence the impressions others have of them.

• They’re anxious about the possibility that in a joint exchange of gifts, their gift might be incompatible with the message from the gift they receive, which would be embarrassing. 
• They usually want the gift to strengthen the relationship by showing ways in which they are similar to the gift recipient. 
• In other cases, they’ll want to select a gift which carries as neutral a message about the relationship as possible. 
• They recognize that the gifting can carry more than one message. 

     Discover what the gift-giver, especially the adolescent shopper, expects in giving. In your on-the-spot analysis, keep in mind that the actual presentation is only one part of gifting. Anthropologists at University of Florida described these three stages:

• Gestation. What motivates the gift shopper? Perhaps a sense of obligation or a desire to avoid discomfort if someone gives a gift and you don’t have one in exchange? At the other extreme is the motivation of selfless love. When you sense this, help the shopper focus as much on what the gift giver wants to communicate as on what the gift recipient likes. According to the research by international marketing consultants Millward Brown, the act of coming to the store in itself shows love. About 22% of survey respondents who prefer in-store gift shopping said they believe that the act of personally going to a store adds value to the gift. 
• Presentation. Admiring the gift wrapping and the unwrapping of the gift can be significant components of the ritual. Consider offering gift wrapping as a value-added service. 
• Reformulation. Maybe the recipient doesn’t like the gift. At worst, this can cause the recipient to be sad or angry. Make returns easy so the negative feelings aren’t diverted to your store. 

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Analyze Gifting to Develop Opportunities

Reserve the Benefits of Exclusivity

A while back, a column in The Economist told a tale of a possible subscription cancellation. The tale did have an unexpected twist: Kelvin MacKenzie, then editor of The Sun, Britain’s best-selling tabloid, received news that a reader had become so outraged with the paper he was thinking of cancelling his subscription. Not cancelling yet, but thinking of cancelling. Mr. MacKenzie took no chances. He notified the subscriber that the man was now banned from reading The Sun ever again.
     The story brought to my mind another story, told by comedian Groucho Marx about a possible cancellation of his club membership. As Groucho relates that tale in Groucho and Me, “I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.”
     Exclusivity in product lines can make your store more attractive, and so can exclusivity in your customer list. The Economist piece points out how this strategy is fundamental to the continuing popularity of high-demand night clubs and private schools. Reputation is enhanced by the percentage of people you turn away.
     Consider the findings from a Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener study of social media practices. The study compared Facebook pages of marketers selling luxury goods with those of marketers selling FMCG merchandise. FMCG stands for “fast moving consumer goods,” characterized by low prices, relatively frequent repeat purchases by consumers, and little emotional involvement from the consumer in the purchase process. Grocery stores sell FMCG merchandise like soft drinks, cleaning products, and toiletries. On the other hand, luxury brands in the study included Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Cartier, and Gucci.
     The FMCG businesses averaged about 365,000 Fans, while the luxury businesses averaged more than 1.5 million. And each post from a luxury business received just over 3,000 Likes on average, while the figure was a scant 131 for the FMCG businesses. From this, it would seem the luxury businesses generated more interaction than the low-involvement FMCG ones.
     However, among the luxury brands, only Tiffany & Co. allowed fans to post to the company page. By contrast, every one of the FMCG marketers allowed the postings. About half the number of FMCG businesses posted surveys and quizzes, either for fun or for consumer research. None of the luxury brands did so. In the final analysis, the luxury businesses were less approachable, more exclusive than the FMCG businesses.

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Limit Social Media for Prestige Appeal

Smell Familiar for Purchasing Enhancement

Keep store fragrances pleasant and familiar to shoppers to influence their purchasing behavior.
     A classic finding in consumer behavior research is that odors influence buying behavior. When a smell hits our brain, it starts out its processing in the limbic system, which is one of the most primitive parts of the brain. We—and the people who shop with us—make decisions instantly and subconsciously based on smells.
     But that classic finding from laboratory studies has, over the years, not worked out as well as we’d hope when applied in operating retail stores. Why? Researchers at Washington State University and Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen found an answer in the degree of complexity of the fragrance: A simple scent increased shopper spending in a retail store, while a hard-to-decode scent did not.
     Shoppers can be wearing fragrances as they come into your store. In addition, if you’re aiming for different fragrances to match different product lines in different parts of your store, the air circulation can mix things up, creating an overly complicated blend.
     Is the answer to make your intended fragrance extra strong? Well, no. Unless the fragrance is faint, your shoppers might faint. Or run away to escape. And then there are the smells in a store that at any strength will chase off shoppers. How about the air around a dirty restroom?
     The answer, instead, is to use pleasant fragrances which are already familiar to the shopper or which you make familiar through repetition. If a smell hasn’t been encountered before, with associations stored in the brain, it will be complicated for the shopper to decode, so the advantages of instant, subconscious influence are lost.
     Stay with smells most people like. Vanilla has pretty much universal appeal. Some preference are cultural. For example, if your shoppers come from an East Indian culture, try sandalwood. Some preferences are seasonal. Cinnamon is more strongly welcomed with Christmas shopping than with swimsuits.
     Also keep in mind that smell is not enough to close the sale all by itself. Even the best perfume or cologne has to be backed up with the goods in order to move a relationship forward. Still, smell does set the groundwork.

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

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Check That Your Store Smells Good 
Deliver Fragrance to Customers Who Like It