Pierce Seniors’ Willful Ignorance Shields

Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Freie Universität Berlin introduce their study about deliberate ignorance by recounting reports of respected experts choosing not to know facts directly relevant to their area of expertise. For instance, James Watson, who was instrumental in discovering the structure of DNA, declined to find out if he had the gene which creates a major risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
     The researchers note a commonality among people in their examples is they were not young experts. So as we age, do we become more likely to engage in willful shielding from potentially unsettling information? they asked. Their subsequent study of 1,910 adults ages 21 to 99 years indicates the answer to that question is yes.
     Some of the scenarios presented to the study sample were hypothetical, such as, “Suppose science will soon be able to determine conclusively whether a god-like entity does or does not exist. Would you want to know or would you prefer not to know?” Others were realistic, such as, “Suppose you are interested in art and have bought an expensive antique statue. Its authenticity was confirmed when you bought it. A friend of yours is a respected expert on ancient art. She offers to examine the statue to determine whether it is truly authentic or not. Would you want to know or would you prefer not to know?”
     The pattern of willingness to know across the items was similar across the age range. Certain items aroused more or aroused less preferred ignorance regardless of the respondent’s age. But overall, the older participants were more likely to defer.
     The explanation is that ambiguity protects against needing to live with fear of a future where no escape options are available or regrets about a past where the option chosen was a major mistake. Seniors have a marked positivity bias. Consequently, the shield thickens as we enter our advanced years. The implication is that even if the senior is confronted with negative information without them being given a choice to get it, they’ll avoid mentally and emotionally acknowledging it.
     There are circumstances in which it’s important for a senior to have certain information in order to make an informed decision. In such instances, you might choose to pierce a shield of willful ignorance by presenting the information with sensitivity, but persistently. Also, equip the senior to handle the news. Here, education can empower.

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Acknowledge Customers’ Willful Ignorance 

Embrace Sadness in Marketing to Seniors

Make an Exhibition of Yourself for Seniors 

Accredit Seniors About Alzheimer’s

Anticipate Anti-Aging Becoming Skin-Deep

Contemporary societies value a youthful appearance, especially in women. So it might seem that the prime market for anti-aging physical appearance offerings would consist of those female consumers who are most aged. However, studies at Université catholique de Louvain find that, for those over age 60, the motivation to reverse the clock winds down. The coupling between physical appearance and self-esteem loosens. Physical appearance becomes more closely associated with wellbeing about personal health and less closely associated with interpersonal attractiveness.
     This doesn’t mean the elderly female consumer stops attending to her physical appearance or is wholly comfortable in her own skin in every sense of that word. The study results do suggest that a highly promising selling point for anti-aging products to women over age 60 is skin care.
     However, the objective is not so much to reverse the ravages of aging on the skin as to protect the skin from further deterioration. This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that women who are satisfied with their appearance are more likely to use anti-aging products. The research findings were consistent with that conclusion. It seemed that the older women, all residing in France where physical appearance is particularly noticed, placed limited importance on meeting cultural norms which favor youthful facial skin, but did derive peace of mind from healthy-looking skin appropriate for their age.
     The researchers note that this shift could account for how elderly women will continue to use anti-aging products even when harboring doubts the products are working. The women consider some deterioration in skin condition to be inevitable. The users take comfort in believing the products could be showing their effectiveness by slowing the inevitable.
     All this informs optimal strategies for marketing anti-aging products. The researchers suggest that for audiences in their 40’s, you talk about the interpersonal value of a youthful physical appearance, while for audiences in their 50’s, you emphasize easing the anxiety associated with acknowledging the aging process. For prospective purchasers in their 60’s and beyond, incorporate into the marketing messages cues of acceptance and wellbeing which will arise from use of the products.
     Multifunctionality also helps sell cosmetics. The NPD Group found that, not surprisingly, the single most important expectation of consumers for a blemish balm is natural-looking coverage of skin blemishes. But 47% of consumers surveyed said they expect a BB Cream to also moisturize the skin, and 42% wanted sunscreen protection included.

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Plan for Multifunction Marketability 

Make an Exhibition of Yourself for Seniors 

Flirt with Deep Acting

Prod Frugal Shoppers’ Needs with Discounts

Will a surprise deep discount on an item successfully persuade frugal shoppers to purchase the item? Researchers at Washington and Lee University, Virginia Tech, St. Edward’s University, and Auckland University present the arguments for opposite answers to this question. Yes, they’ll buy it because frugal people love spending less. No, because frugal people hate spending at all.
     Which path is taken depends on how strongly the frugal shopper decides that they need—not just want—the item. But the researchers find that encountering an unexpected deep discount can increase the frugal shopper’s perception of how much they need the item. The justification for spending the money is then the opportunity to take advantage of a serendipitous great bargain. The cautious spender is temporarily transformed into an impulse buyer.
     In the studies, self-rated need for the item increased notably after presentation of a “60% off” deal. This worked only if there was at least a moderate need for the item to begin with. There was no evidence the technique worked much at all with shoppers who are not clearly frugal or with frugal shoppers when the discount was for only 10% off.
     Historically, research has indicated that deep discounts are more influential on hedonic, pleasure-oriented, items than on utilitarian, functional items. The good deal gives the consumer an excuse to indulge. But this current research suggests that in circumstances of prevalent frugal shoppers, you’re better advised to reserve those margin-reducing deep discounts for the functional items, since at least a moderate need is already felt.
     A habit of carefully planning purchases and monitoring expenditures is stimulated by tight economic circumstances, such as during business recovery from a pandemic or natural disaster. But some people are by nature chronic tightwads regardless of the state of the economy. Tightwads aren’t the same as frugal shoppers. Frugality is driven by a pleasure in saving. Tightwads are driven by a pain of paying.
     Facilitate tightwads spending their money with you by reinforcing their sense of responsibility. Congratulate tightwads on how they shop carefully. Tightwads take pride in limiting their spending, but feel more comfortable when loosening up within reason. So describe upgrades as “small expenses.” Remind tightwads that you’ll be responsible in what you recommend to them. Then keep your promise by explaining how the products and services you sell give full value. Dealing with a responsible retailer will ease the pain of paying.

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Have Unannounced Discounts on Common Purchases 

Bundle Utility, Discount Hedonism 

Loosen Up Tightwads’ Wallets

Foster Senior Wellness with Reminiscing

People who engage to a greater extent in personal nostalgia are more likely to maintain or even increase their wellbeing into old age. This suggests that encouraging older adults to reminisce could benefit their long-term wellness.
     A set of University of Surrey, University of Southampton, and North Dakota State University researchers identified relationships between personal nostalgia and psychological wellness across the lifespan. These researchers describe personal nostalgia as reminiscences about fond, meaningful memories of one’s own social experiences. Sentimentality with a tinge of longing distinguish personal nostalgia from certain other contemplations about the past. Historical nostalgia, in contrast to personal nostalgia, consists of a preference for objects or circumstances which characterized a period in the past. The memories aren’t necessarily of specific situations, the emotions are less strong, and there is less thinking about the socializing.
     Personal nostalgia eases discomforts when there’s a limited time ahead for completion of an objective, say the researchers. This is why personal nostalgia facilitates psychological wellbeing. Throughout adulthood, people will call upon personal nostalgia in times of loneliness, discontinuity, and existential doubt. Because the elderly are more likely to have a shortened future time perspective, nostalgia has added influence on wellbeing.
     There’s a possible exception to this overall finding, though. Researchers at Dartmouth College and University of Pennsylvania discovered that younger and older adults derive happiness from different sorts of experiences. For the young, it tends to be the extraordinary and infrequent. For older people, it tends to be the ordinary and frequent.
     The explanation has to do with the place of experiences in self-identity. Young adults are often in a process of defining their self-identity. Distinctive experiences are of interest. Elderly adults are more concerned with strengthening an established identity as they approach the end of life. Reminiscing about repeated similar experiences helps with that.

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Appeal to Nostalgia 

Condemn Snowball Samples to Hell 

Long for Longitudinal Looks at Seniors 

Know Correlation Won’t Tell Causation 

Stay Dead-On in Dealing Death for Seniors

Solicit Online Questions to Fit Shoppers

Providing a question-and-answer page for your ecommerce shoppers leads to more positive item ratings from eventual customers. A prime explanation, say the Boston University researchers, is that a Q&A page enables a better fit of the item with characteristics of a purchaser.
     The timing, content, and tone of a Q&A page are different from that of customer reviews. A Q&A page is generally used by a shopper before a purchase, describes item attributes, and includes limited emotional tone. Customer reviews are posted by users after purchase and often include emotional sentiments.
     In the studies, the Q&A availability decreased the frequency of negative comments about the fit of the item with customer requirements and tastes. I’d expect that to result in more repeat business.
     Average ratings improved by only a fraction of a star. Still, in addition to other measures, such an improvement could make a difference in a shopper’s purchase decision. In an email to me, Prof. Shrabastee Banerjee, the primary researcher, wrote, “The size of the effect depends on how much fit uncertainty consumers have about the product in the first place. So products that are more prone to mismatched purchases show the largest increase in ratings after Q&As come in.”
     Product forums and virtual fitting rooms also can help resolve shopper uncertainty about item fit. Other studies have shown that these convert shoppers into buyers, build basket totals, and reduce item returns. However, virtual fitting rooms are often expensive to develop. Product forums, with their continuing contributions from item users, become unwieldy unless scrupulously edited and indexed. A Q&A page is a simpler solution than either of those alternatives.
     Consistent with the Q&A allowing shoppers to select an item fitting them, be prepared for questions from shoppers about being able to customize the item for better fit. The “IKEA Effect” refers to the finding that consumers are willing to pay more for a product they’ve had the opportunity to customize. IKEA encourages shoppers to select among sets of options in configuring a purchased item. Studies at Tulane University, Harvard University, and Duke University attributed the IKEA Effect to reinforcement of self-identity experienced via the choice of options, plus the value to a consumer which comes from validating their competence in assembling the personally-selected components.
     Yes, the “IKEA Effect” name for this does carry irony, considering that many people think their degree of IKEA assembly skills qualifies as incompetence.

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Open Up Shoppers So You Can Personalize 

Tack On the Tactile for Brand Communities 

Keep Ecommerce Product Returns Pleasant 

Eke Out the Best IKEA Effect

Bound Your Irrationality When Pricing

When setting prices on what they sell, marketers necessarily set bounds on what they consider. There are so many factors with such variations in influence. Researchers at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Linköping University, and Case Western Reserve University analyzed characteristics of this bounded rationality as used in the process of pricing products which are being newly introduced.
     Establishing prices for new items has distinctive importance because sales performance during the first weeks after launch of an item greatly influence an item’s subsequent success. Pricing innovative items also is a distinctively difficult challenge because there’s little or no reference history.
     The researchers’ objective was to identify psychological traits of pricing professionals which are associated with profitable marketplace performance of newly introduced items. The analysis was in terms of three approaches to setting the price: 

• Cost-based pricing. Add a specific percentage to whatever you paid for the item. 
• Competition-based pricing. Base the price on what others are charging for that or an equivalent item. 
• Value-based pricing. Determine the maximum amount people will pay for the benefits offered by the item.

     One winning psychological trait for robust sales performance of recently introduced items proved to be the pricing professional’s intuitive skills. This was measured via self-reported degree-of-agreement with items like “When I make a business decision, I trust my inner feelings and reactions.” The contribution of intuition makes sense. Depending on instincts avoids being overwhelmed by the abundance of information.
     Another winning trait was conformity, which the researchers defined as recognizing in what ways other stakeholders are setting their prices and then setting your prices in response. Again, this makes sense. Pricing operates within the marketplace context. Analyses of the data indicated that managers who are more conforming can predict product performance more accurately whether they are engaged in cost-based or value-based pricing. At least part of this advantage is attributable to managers’ use of intuition.
     Other research shows that the intuition must be educated by past experience and remain open to continuing improvement.
     In stating their conclusions, the researchers recognize the bounds on their own rationality. They describe their study as exploratory rather than comprehensive, and they identify crucial questions for follow-up research. Yet, consistent with recognition of the need for marketers to move ahead based on the best conclusions available, the researchers suggest that those people responsible for pricing be selected for their demonstrated skills in intuition and conformity.

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Take Charge of Your Pricing 

Trust Educated Intuition