Hand Shoppers An Aid to Imagining Usage

When using comparative advertising, we prefer not to have the shopper imagine using the product. Visualizing takes mental energy away from intellectually analyzing the comparison, thereby making the comparative ad less effective.
     However, in other sorts of advertising, we’d like the consumer to imagine usage, since this increases the probability of purchase. Research findings scheduled for publication in next April’s Journal of Consumer Research provide a simple suggestion for increasing the ease with which people can engage in this mental imagery: Show the product oriented toward the person’s dominant hand. Since most people are right-handed, this would mean an orientation toward the right in most cases. The advice influences not only pictures in ads, but also displays in stores and demonstrations by salespeople.
     The researchers, from Brigham Young University and University of Michigan, prepared for their study by creating ads which oriented to the right or the left parts of the illustration most directly related to usage. This included handles on mugs and the placement of forks and spoons. When the orientation was to the right for a product people otherwise liked, the motivation to possess the product became even greater.
     Notice that this means the more effective ad is showing a mirror image of the setup for a right-handed person to use the product. The consumer is looking at the ad, so what would be closest to the consumer’s right hand will have been to the left of a person whose image faces us in the ad. Again, because most people are right-handed, a natural tendency would be to orient photo setups the other way around. The research findings indicate this detracts from the motivational power of the ad.
     For an appreciation of how this applies to in-store demonstrations of a product, you need only think of how confusing it can be when the dance teacher or exercise coach faces you in teaching a new move. The instructor might turn her back to you for the demonstration so that when she lifts her right arm, you know to lift your right arm, not your left arm. If facing you, the instructor does best to lift her left arm while giving you verbal instructions to lift your right arm.
     When you or your salesperson faces the customer while demonstrating usage of a product with the intent of having the shopper imagine usage, left becomes right while right becomes left.

Click below for more:
Help Shoppers Use Their Imagination
In Comparative Ads, Don't Show Users
Relax Caution About Comparative Imagining

Stake Out Promotional Vampire Risks

Ah, another Halloween, another day of confronting vampire costumes and vampire chortles. It’s a risk that will fly away with tomorrow’s rising sun. But the promotional vampire risks. Those have an eternal life. Don’t get bitten by advertising, publicity, and personal selling tactics which suck the life out of the intended objective—to move the merchandise.
     A recent posting on The Atlantic blog gives an example of what international market researcher Nigel Hollis calls the video vampire effect: A 2003 TV ad in the UK for a product called X-cite intended to convince the viewer that using the product would eliminate even the worst of bad breath, what the ad referred to as “dog breath.” At the start of the ad was a disheveled man awakening on a couch, and at the end of the ad, he quickly swallowed an X-cite before being kissed by a woman who has entered the room. In between the beginning and end of the ad, the man opens his mouth and, via special effects magic, regurgitates a dog.
     The ad drew plenty of attention. This is usually a fine outcome. However, the shock of the narrative could easily erase any memories of the advertiser and the claimed product benefits. The main message was sucked away.
     I could argue that the shock likely caused loads to people to want to see the ad repeatedly and telling their friends about it, resulting in more exposure for X-cite. That’s true, and if the brand name had been featured throughout, rather than saved for a second at the end in a mystery style, the effect might have been bloody good. Or if retailers had posters in their stores with a photo of the dog and the X-cite name, it could work. Shock does sell. Consider ticket sales for haunted houses and raunchy movies.
     Humor can also become a promotional vampire. People pay more attention to the joke than to the sales message. In another vein, though, humor sometimes draws away objections to the purchase. Researchers at Georgetown University and University of Washington found that a joke which is not immediately understand can be highly effective in making a sale. The shopper's mental energies are taken with trying to figure out the humor, and this distracts the customer from thinking about reasons not to buy. Humor could be useful in moving the indecisive customer to the cashier station.

Click below for more:
Defend Goal Line with Provocative Offensive
Joke Around to Facilitate the Sale

Describe Fully-Loaded Items to the Focused

What’s an item you sell which is available with a number of optional features? The car that can be ordered with or without the spoiler and the racing stripes? The car wash that can be purchased as a one-star version with only dirt removal or the five-star version, which includes the upholstery shampoo, hand waxing, and more?
     A traditional technique for selling such items to the shopper is to initially present the base model and then, once there’s buy-in, list the available options. The technique is especially attractive now, when shoppers are so price-sensitive.
     That’s fine. However, in the process, remember to describe the fully-loaded model. Research at Bentley University compared two selection frames: In the first, the shopper was invited to add desired options to a base model. In the second, the shopper was invited to delete undesired options from a fully-loaded model. In a set of experiments, the researchers found that consumers attending to this single purchase decision ended up selecting a larger number of options with the delete frame.

• This effect is more likely to occur with products and services in which the experience of using the purchase has value, such as a car. It is less likely to occur with highly functional products, such as a water heater.
• When the consumer has a great many shopping decisions to make, the effect is less likely. Here, the person might become irritated at needing to wade through a seemingly endless number of choices.
• Shoppers who appreciate the appeal of the fully-loaded model become more likely to consider the price of the model with fewer options to be a good deal. Therefore, the introduction of the fully-loaded model can be an especially helpful selling technique at the point where the shopper has concerns about the price of whatever other model they have their eye on.
• Those who buy less than the full meal deal might be better off. In a set of studies conducted at University of Maryland, participants were offered a choice from three versions of an item. More than 60% of the participants selected the most complex of the three. After making their selection, each participant was invited to add more features from a list totaling 25. The average number of additional features chosen was 20. But post-usage inquiries showed that those who selected a simpler version of the product at the start were much happier.

Click below for more:
Offer Customers Basic Plus Add-Ons
Offer Fundamental Indulgences
Anchor Browsers onto Higher Prices
Stimulate Bragging Rights from Complexity

Authenticate Subtly

Some years ago, researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison documented how Starbucks had become a victim of their own successful branding of the shops as an authentic coffee experience. The research found that many customers, after being convinced of the importance of such an experience, decided Starbucks was bragging too much about their authenticity. Those customers gave up on Starbucks and aimed for other shops which showed more humility. Consumers figured that the more you highlight your authenticity, the less authentic you are.
     Later, a New York Times article documented anecdotally the same sort of phenomenon with craft and artisanal offerings. Consumers are experiencing an overabundance of these products. Home furnishings retailer West Elm partners with Etsy, a marketer of handmade pieces. Pottery Barn highlights their “Found” collection of distinctive items collected from around the globe. CB2, a spinoff from retailer Crate and Barrel, hired a craftsman to hand-build a limited edition of 200 American black walnut side tables, which were peddled at twelve stores and via the online catalog.
     Even at a production run of 200, a claim of uniqueness or of handcrafted authenticity wears like a thin veneer. The artisan was quoted in the NYT article as saying, “I felt like an employee at a Ford plant, drilling 1,200 holes in a day or two.” A brag of “uniquely authentic” starts sounding to consumers like a synonym for “faddishly routine.” The Wisconsin researchers referred to this as a “doppelganger brand image.” Doppelganger is defined as a ghostly counterpart of a living entity.
     How to avoid the problem? Maintain the appeal of authenticity by featuring it subtly.

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

Click below for more:
Prime Customer Interest with Adjacencies
Keep Up-to-Date with Nostalgia Appeals
Brag About Your Retailing Humility

Set Unreasonable Goals Subject to Revision

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson has described how Mr. Jobs would periodically distort reality when setting goals. He’d establish deadlines that were impossible to meet, and he’d then insist the goals were reasonable.
     There were occasions in which this distortion of reality created a new reality: The goal was met. In other cases, Mr. Jobs had to accept the limitations which accompany reality distortion. He’d end up revising a goal.
     There are times when you can motivate yourself and your staff to scale a Mount Everest of profitability challenges by setting unreasonable goals and then proving them possible by achieving them. Still, to preserve the well-being of yourself, your business, and your staff, be sure each unreasonable goal is subject to revision.
     Study findings from University of British Columbia and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology provide insight about how to do this. Researchers considered goal pursuit, achievement, failure, and abandonment. The kernel of their advice: Identify how much of the motivation to achieve the goal is coming from within yourself and how much from outside influences. The more that comes from outside influences, the sooner you should respond to shortfalls by choosing a lower mountain to climb. Disengage from the unreachable. On the other hand, the greater the degree to which the motivation to achieve the goal comes from within yourself, the wiser it is to greet goal achievement by next embarking on achievement of a more ambitious goal.
     Other research, from San Francisco State University and York University, shows how a decision to climb the unreasonably challenging mountain can distort both the goal and the teamwork involved in achieving it. The subjects of study in the research were people who signed on for a commercial climbing expedition of Mount Everest, a purchase decision costing in the range of $50,000.
     The original goal was to reach the summit, and the default method was to work as a team. However, as the paying climbers would get closer to the summit, their goal became more focused on achieving a unique distinction, such as being the first woman of a given nationality to climb Everest. The consequence was a shift from collaboration and support to competitiveness and exclusion.
     Overly ambitious goals engender fear. Fear can help you move fast and think sharply. When excessive, though, fear can immobilize a retailer and destroy a work team.

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

Click below for more:
Keep Your Eye on the Goal
Use Your Fear to Your Advantage

Cop Keystones as Historical Mementos

Following Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman described the Department of Homeland Security’s responders as people who, “ran around like Keystone Kops, uncertain about what they were supposed to do or uncertain how to do it.”
     The allusion was to the stock players in silent movie comedies from Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company. The Keystone Kops went in all directions at once, jumped up and down, and drove their vehicles recklessly, all while failing to apprehend the perpetrator of the crime.
     The implication of “Keystone Kops” has stayed solid over the decades, but the constituent words do have additional meanings. Think about “cop” in the sense of grabbing away. Think about “keystone” in the retailing sense of pricing an item at double whatever the supplier charged you.
     Like the Keystone Kops, keystone pricing should be considered as history. This method of setting margins violates the teachings of behavioral pricing research—teachings that allow you to maximize your profitability. Shoppers pay you for the value they place on the item, not for some multiple of what you paid for it.
     Why then is keystone pricing supposedly resurging? Why did the editors of Gifts and Decorative Accessories decide to have a feature article titled, “Let’s Kill Keystone”?
     I’ve concluded it has to do with the tough economy. The smart retailers realize they can’t keep cutting prices if they expect to survive, so they defer to keystone pricing to discipline themselves. The understaffed retail businesses think they don’t have the time to assess the proper margin on each item individually, so they depend on the vendor to say what to charge, and many vendors are accustomed to quoting keystone pricing.
     Unlike the Keystone Kops, keystone pricing, then, is an example of too little activity, not too much. The Kops didn’t catch the criminal, but at least their activity amused us.
     Devote your time to setting proper margins. They are your lifeblood. Yes, the price you charge the customer for an item certainly bears a relationship to what you paid the supplier. And shoppers are particularly likely to accept a price increase when you explain the increase is due to your costs from the supplier going up.
     The problem with keystone pricing is the automatic formula applied across the board, across the shelves and racks. Set your margins as close as possible to the level of the individual Stock Keeping Unit (SKU).

Click below for more:
Set Your Own Prices
Set Higher Margins on Low Velocity Items
Prepare Customers for Price Increases