Band with Consumers for Wellness Branding

Self-branding—marketing a distinctive favorable image of oneself to others—fits these times where people put themselves out there on social media. Researchers at San Diego State University and Finland’s University of Turku explore how consumers lead with wellness in their self-branding.
     Wellness connotes power—a desirable characteristic in a self-brand. It’s considered holistic, incorporating the physical, intellectual, emotional, and social, so the self-brand which leads with wellness comes across as integrated. At the same time, because of the multifaceted nature of wellness, there are ample opportunities to project a distinctive self-brand.
     The concept of wellness can become associated with effort and sacrifice: Exercising vigorously to maintain muscle strength. Limiting what we eat in order to avoid disease. But the studies showed how consumers also incorporate indulgences both to achieve wellness—getting enough sleep was mentioned in every one of the focus groups—and as evidence of wellness—being pampered at a spa, for instance.
     Those who market to those wanting to market their self-brand should emphasize how they contribute to wellness, the researchers suggest. Those who call themselves healthcare professionals might choose to continue doing so, but they’d benefit from at least labeling their services as wellness: “Healthcare” is reactive and often negative. “Wellness” is proactive and positive.
     But ironically, optimal service to the consumer aiming for an individualized brand consists of banding together, and maybe even bonding together, with them. The researchers found that people who lead with wellness in their self-brand will talk of getting a better understanding of themselves and of the success of their self-branding through interactions with others. From another angle, the integrated well self includes the social component.
     Since such business or professional relationships might take on the characteristics of friendships, be sure to clarify expectations. Selling one’s personal brand exposes one’s vulnerabilities. When the same service failure by someone the consumer considers a salesperson is instead due to someone considered a friend, the feelings of betrayal can be much greater. Betrayal is felt when trust is violated.
     The dominant motives of most dissatisfied customers are to restore a sense of fairness and vent negative emotions. But researchers at University of Bern and University of Texas-Austin found that a customer who feels betrayed by a marketer will frequently devote substantial efforts to harming the marketer’s reputation. A potent preventative and cure was clarity about what the customer should expect from the retailer.

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Brand Training as Threatening Confidence 

Found Influence with Founders’ Stories 

Slip Variety into Sleepy Shopper Selling 

Cure Feelings of Retailer Betrayal

Stiff Misplaced Risk from Animation

Animation in marketing materials generally increases impulse buying, especially in older people, according to studies at University of Stuttgart. Except when it has the opposite effect. This contrasting consequence was seen in a set of studies at Singapore Management University and SUNY-Buffalo. In that research, animated line-graph displays of data which unfolded over time, such as with a stock price, increased the viewer’s sensitivity to risk. The result was caution instead of impulsivity. Because of misplaced fear, an investor might forgo profitable opportunities.
     The effect does have to do with how changes in data points are interpreted, and this is influenced by culture. Researchers from New York University-Stern and Princeton University asked study participants to allocate $1,000 across a selection of stocks with varying past performance. The European-American participants were more likely than the Chinese participants to put the money into stocks which had previously shown uniform growth. The Chinese participants were more likely to invest in ambiguously-performing stocks, anticipating that a balance would lead to an uptick in the stock value for any prior underperformance.
     Advancing technologies combined with increasingly sophisticated consumer expectations lead marketers to use an abundance of animation in demonstrating the benefits of products and services on websites and in personal selling. Show special caution with these animations, marketers. It’s too easy for your audiences to be misled when mentally projecting what will happen next.
     The Singapore/SUNY researchers note that their findings were in the realm of financial decision making and that there’s reason to believe the effect of unfolding animations is different with health risk estimates. The general finding, though, is that people readily project ahead from animations which show trajectories, such as animated charts of weight loss or completion of building construction. We’re all overloaded with information, so we welcome tools that help us get to the point. Also, many consumers place extra trust in a computer-generated animation largely because the animation is using a more sophisticated technology than still pictures. “What’s newer must be better,” they say.
     Protect your organization and your consumers by staying aware of the dangers of flawed predictions from animated portrayals. Give disclaimers within the animation. Phrasing in the spirit of “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” is good. But it’s not enough. Perhaps animate the disclaimer by showing a flashing question mark at the end of the trajectory. Or show alternative directions the trend might go.

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Beware Flawed Predictions from Animations 

Yo-Yo with Yin-Yang Cues 

Dissect the Shopper’s Risk Tolerance

Leap Up Donations Using Legacy Potential

People are more likely to donate their time and money when they desire to create a legacy through helping others. Many researchers call this desire generativity, using the name given to it by psychologist Erik Erickson.
     Prof. Erikson also coined the term identity crisis, which refers to a drive to determine who each of us truly is during our times of developmental change over the lifespan. Generativity eases the identity crisis by helping us maintain a stable identity and then extend that into the future. For this reason, an appeal to generativity could be influential with elderly adults, who think about what legacy they’ll leave after they’ve died.
     But a study at City University of New York and University of California-Irvine concludes that the peak in generativity occurs at about age 56 on average, a point well before the average age of death. The evidence recommends using generativity appeals for persuasion targets who are at middle age on up.
     The same study found that the peak for more general prosociality—the desire to take actions which will benefit others outside one’s family—occurs more than a decade earlier, at about 45 years of age on average. It seems that the attractiveness of leaving a legacy does increase as we approach becoming senior citizens.
     The study carries more weight because it was longitudinal, tracking the degree of generativity in the same people as they aged. Longitudinal studies of human development generally produce more trustworthy results than cross-sectional studies, which compare groups of people of different ages at the same point in time.
     Because the study consisted of self-assessment measures, it seems that your target audiences will be aware of their degree of generativity. This facilitates their motivation by your appeals. The assessment scale asked people degree of agreement with items like “I try to pass along the knowledge I have gained through my experiences,” “I have important skills that I try to teach others,” and, “People come to me for advice.” This is the spirit to address in drawing donations using legacy potential.
     An appeal to generativity also influences the timing of monetary donations. Over all, people donate higher amounts if asked to pledge a charitable donation in the future than if asked to give now. But Ryerson University researchers found that senior citizens show fewer differences. As we age, our generativity results in greater willingness to donate now.

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Resolve Identity Crises for the Elderly 

Long for Longitudinal Looks at Seniors 

Generate Seniors’ Generativity Now

Attend to Numbers in Time Commitments

Devoting two hours per week isn’t the same as devoting 120 minutes per week for a client setting out to achieve an objective. People we persuade to take on the challenge will organize their efforts differently depending on how we specify the recommended time. The Erasmus University and University of Navarra researchers who identified this difference also found that the “minutes per week” formula results in people both getting to work and achieving the objective sooner.
     The explanation is in how people respond to larger compared to smaller numbers. The “120” feels much more abundant than the “2,” so the person is more likely to subdivide the overall project into steps. Those steps make the effort less daunting, so initiative and then momentum build.
     For this to work, however, we need to head off a danger presented by subgoals: The achiever might be so pleased at the benchmark completions along the way that self-congratulation sabotages subsequent efforts. For this reason, as we coach the consumer through the process, keep their attention on the overall objective.
     The focus of attention has a role from another angle, too: Yes, “120” is larger than “2,” but “hours” are larger than “minutes.” The effect depends on the person thinking more about the numeral than the unit. Past research has found that most people do this automatically and in a variety of contexts. The difference in warranty lengths between 72 months and 84 months is perceived as larger than between 6 years and 7 years although both differences are objectively identical.
     Dividing up the bothersome effort in order to achieve a desired outcome can be implemented in other ways. A University of Toronto study found that being told how long a bad experience will last makes it seem less tolerable. Then a companion study by the same researchers went on to suggest a way to ease the agony a bit: Encourage the person to unpack the time estimates, guessing on their own how long each step will take rather than accept a time for the total given by somebody else.
     This happens because we dislike spending time on unpleasant tasks, so we tend to predict we will get them done quickly. It works the other way around for a list of experiences a consumer finds pleasant. Here, when the time estimates are unpacked, the total predicted duration grows. We think it will take longer.

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Measure Your Magnitude Quotes Situationally 

Unpack Unpleasant Experience Time Estimates

Weigh the Ways You Portray Item Weight

Holding an item usually increases the consumer’s willingness to buy it because it gives a sense of ownership. However, the grasp also provides information about the item’s weight, and that could discourage purchase. If the item will be carried around, such as is true with a mobile phone or laptop computer, the perception of substantial heft can be considered negative.
     Researchers at Texas A&M University, University of Kentucky, Seoul National University, and Myongji University were interested in perceptions of weight arising from looking at depictions of an item being considered for purchase. This comes into play with ecommerce when the shopper hasn’t previously held the item. For example, depictions of an object as larger or darker in color produce perceptions of heaviness. Ads for items where low weight is an advantage should avoid closeup images, and the ads should feature a light-hued model.
     The researchers find that the density of a product display also matters. Consumers shown a smartphone with 90 app icons expressed less interest in purchasing the phone than consumers shown the same phone with 30 app icons. Along with this, the more densely packed display led to perceptions that the phone was heavier. A companion study showed that this difference in purchase interest was not due to judgments that the 30-icon phone was a more recent model than the 90-icon phone. The idea was that consumers might think a phone loaded with 90 app icons must have been owned for a long time.
     The recommendation, then, is to maintain low visual density in marketing materials for items where portability is a desirable feature. On the other hand, when stability and heft are desirable product features, such as with a home safe, darker colors and more crowded visual displays would be advantages.
     Adding psychological heft also creates preference for, or at least an acceptance of, density in marketing materials. When the researchers prefaced displays by asking consumers to assume that the choice among phones was highly consequential, there was little difference in purchase intentions expressed by those shown a 90-app phone display and those shown a 45-app one.
     The effect works in the other direction as well. Researchers at Chinese University of Hong Kong and National University of Singapore found that people weighed down by experiencing or thinking about heaviness become likely to consider an immediately subsequent purchase decision as more consequential. They’ll probably deliberate longer before agreeing to buy.

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Reach Out for What Will Touch Your Shoppers 

Balance Online Text & Graphics Strategically 

Feather Your Shoppers with Light Thoughts

Spoil Your Audience with Spoilers

To pamper the audience for experiences you’re selling, offer to reveal some of the surprises they’d encounter. According to studies at University of Houston and Canada’s Western University, these spoilers increase the popularity of the experiences.
     Consumers encounter the option to view spoilers most often in movie reviews, and it is here that the researchers examined the effects. They defined “spoiler intensity” as the degree to which the 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—by far the most popular U.S. movie review site—and box office revenues for the first eight weeks of the movie’s release.
     There was a clear 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.
     The researchers suggest that shoppers for an experience offering be given the option to view one or more spoilers, and that a spoiler not be revealed until the consumer assertively agrees to view it. This is consistent with findings from other research that the degree of desire to reduce uncertainty depends on a consumer’s personality, objectives, and circumstances.
     As an example, although reading or hearing spoilers might reduce the ability to enjoy the surprises in the actual experience, compensations could include feeling special from knowing something others don’t. This, in turn, can lead to the consumer going out of their way to tease others with the information, building the status of the consumer while increasing word-of-mouth about the experiential item.
     Still, maintaining mystery also builds sales. A WOM example comes from Washington University in St. Louis and Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. When a customer is given an unexpected bonus at the time of purchase, the surprise endows extra value. If the retailer advertises details of the bonus awards program rather than only broadly hinting about it, customers won’t experience the same joy as if they’d not expected the bonus when making their own purchases.
     For experiences such as watching movies or receiving unanticipated bonuses, the marketer’s proper balance between reducing uncertainty and preserving mystery will leave consumers spoiling for participation.

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Dial In to Dialectical Thinking 

Steer WOM Away From Surprise Bonus News 

Magnetize the Consumer with Mystery 

Charge for Savoring