Text: Wang Zhiyuan | Marketing Psychology Card
1. The less money you have, the more willing you are to buy small items?
There are many obscure theories in economics.
For example: the macro analysis tool IS-LM model, one of the theoretical structures that describes the interconnection between product markets and currency markets; also has the popular lipstick effect , which has always had a high exposure rate, especially when the economy is in recession. Be high-spirited. What exactly does
mean?
After searching some academic information, I found no reliable evidence to explain the formation and application behind this effect, which makes people a little confused.
It is usually said that the Great Depression occurred in the United States from 1929 to 1932. At that time, even if women were very poor, they would spend money to buy lipstick to please themselves and get a little comfort.
To put it simply, even if people are very poor, they are still willing to buy some small items that are not necessary for daily life, or participate in some cheap activities to give themselves some comfort.
Therefore, in an economic recession, the sales of the products represented by lipstick will be better than other products, or even exceed the original demand.
How is this mentality formed?
The American Psychological Association (The American Psychological Association) published an academic research report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, pointing out that men who dominate resources will become more scarce during critical periods, and women will feel greater competition, so they need to dress themselves up. Oneself win in the competition.
Research on men has also found this reciprocal view
That is, men believe that they have advantages in "choosing a spouse" or "other aspects" during the economic recession, and men buy so-called products that maintain attractiveness. are also much lower than women.
Overall, while the shape of the lipstick effect has varied across countries and categories over time, ultimately what these products have in common is that they all provide instant gratification. , and usually users can afford it.
How does a brand use this rule for marketing?
First, in addition to its practical value, it must have additional meanings (such as emotional comfort). Secondly, the absolute price of the product itself must be Low , and make full use of situations to guide consumers and increase consumption desire.
2. More is better?
We have the right to choose freely, and we can gain identity through choices, such as:
Choose suitable clothes and choose favorite variety shows. , but there must be moments when you are indecisive, such as whether to eat salad or fried chicken when facing a variety of coffees?
This fear of "making a choice" or missing the "best choice". This situation is also called "The Paradox of Choice" from a marketing perspective.
This concept was experimented many times by Professor Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University Business School in 1995.
Ta set up a jam stall, selling 24 kinds of jams instead of 6 kinds, rotating every hour. When there are many kinds of jams in a day, it can attract more consumers, but customers mostly wait and buy when there are few kinds. .
It can be seen that although more choices mean greater attraction in theory, in practice, many people are at a loss when faced with choices.
It's like when you walk through a row of shelves with dozens of different flavors of chocolate. When stopping in front of a new chocolate brand, most people will choose to leave, or directly choose the most familiar flavor.
Therefore, researchers believe that too many choices may cause three negative effects: 1) Analysis numbness, 2) Purchase regret, 3) Decision fatigue
First of all, if there are too many choices, customers will fall into a state of numbness, resulting in no Buy any one.
Smart home appliance brand Whirlpool Whirlpool conducted a test on EDM marketing. By significantly reducing the number of advertised products in EDM, its participation increased by 42%.
Secondly, after browsing for a few hours, consumers will have a "regret" before making the final decision to purchase.
Because they will reflect on whether they are doing the right thing, and even regret buying large-capacity products (after all, customers want more).
Furthermore, the number of correct choices each of us can make every day is limited. Once this limit is reached, the ability to make wise decisions will be seriously reduced, leading to a situation where one step is wrong and the other is wrong.
It is worth mentioning that cannot ignore the positive effects of choice.
For example, proposing multiple categories for more user groups can help brands improve ROI and conversion rates on the one hand, and successfully attract consumers on the other, and ultimately increase promotion volume.
So the "paradox of choice" itself has a paradox. So, as a brand, how can we defeat the paradox so that users will not be disgusted?
targets accurately for each different group. The number of products is small but refined, and tells this group what highlights can attract them.
and then do scene splitting , just like MacBook, clearly informing users that Ari can be used for daily office work, and Pro can be used for audio and video editing, making it more convenient to handle complex things.
3. Why should we pay attention to consumption scenarios?
Many TOB companies tend to focus too much on "tool functions" and ignore "target user needs" when making products; this situation is called "milkshake mistakes" in marketing psychology.
Simply speaking, in an incident, people tend to ignore the behavior of the parties involved and focus on the incident; In addition, coupled with the influence of concepts, the analyst will be limited to a narrow frame, making it difficult to see his own face.
This concept comes from McDonald's :
At that time, when it wanted to increase milkshake sales, the company hired professional researchers to figure out which characteristics customers were most concerned about, whether it needed to be thicker, sweeter, cooler, etc., almost everyone was concerned about it. It’s all about optimizing the product itself.
One of the researchers, Mr. M, was different. He sat in the McDonald's dining area for 18 hours a day to observe when some people bought milkshakes.
According to the data, many milkshakes are sold out in the morning. Some people usually buy them alone, or the people who buy them usually do not use them in the store. Mr.
M interviewed the real reasons for those who bought milkshakes but left immediately. He learned that the answers were "They all use them while commuting" or "to refresh themselves" while driving. Some people reported that it takes 20 minutes to suck through a straw. Very troublesome.
They have many restrictions, such as:
Wearing professional attire every day is very time-consuming, the food cannot be too hot, too greasy, cannot be splashed everywhere, and it takes time to finish eating, so there is very little time to enjoy the food.
Once he understands what customers need, he knows how to improve it. first "reduces the consistency of milk", secondly adds fruit pieces to make it more interesting, and thirdly designs convenient channels to facilitate quick purchase during the morning peak.
So, this incident tells us:
Don’t pay too much attention to the product itself. We think that product needs include user needs, but in fact, without truly starting from the customer’s perspective, it is difficult to find the “reason to buy”.
is also "Only talking about the advantages, not telling the benefits."
Secondly, many behavioral patterns are too traditional. The predecessor of fixed patterns is also a way of solving problems that evolved over a period of time under environmental requirements.
But it may not necessarily be used in another environment. Therefore, the basis of innovation must meet the "inherent scenarios" of in order to find the best solution.
4. Whose fault is it?
Sturman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology once conducted an experiment on "beer sales and circulation".
probably means:
If the customer places an order with the company for 100 pieces in the first month, in order to prevent the risk of shortage, the company will ask the manufacturer to provide 105 pieces; Then, the company's upstream manufacturer will ask Ta's upstream manufacturer for insurance reasons. 110 pieces available.
and so on. When reaching the most upstream manufacturer, the number provided may reach more than 500 pieces.
As the cumulative effect occurred over the course of a year, this number was very different from the actual needs, resulting in heavy losses at the last layer. This effect was later called " beer effect" (Beer effect).
What does this mean? Information transmission problems are exposed in the
supply chain. Sometimes, asymmetric information will distort demand information, and different stages have different estimates of demand conditions. If accurate data cannot be mastered in detail, it will lead to supply chain imbalance.
This is just like at work. When the results are not good, everyone complains to each other and passes the blame to each other. They all feel that they have made the right decision, so the cause of the bad results must be caused by others.
Actually, not necessarily. Each role in the
link only focuses on themselves and local information. Although the decision seems correct, it may bring bias to the entire system. The root of the problem is the lack of "system thinking" awareness.
For example:
TOB market, in order to sell tools, sales often promise some functions or services that are not currently available. This may seem fine, but 10% of the demand will turn into 100% of the workload during delivery. In serious cases, it will cause An irreparable situation.
The solution is that as a leader, you should collect more global information when making decisions, formulate action instructions from the global perspective, and break out of the local optimal decision-making cycle.
When making a personal report, it is necessary to separate "facts" and "personal thoughts", and do not use "I think" as the basis for the report.
5. The more curious you are, the more you want to know everything?
Many parents find that since their children can talk, they always like to ask "why", such as:
Why can airplanes fly in the sky? Why can't you fly a kite on a rainy day? Some of them are completely answerable, but some of them make people laugh or cry and feel overwhelming.
Regardless of children or adults, we like to ask "why"?
I have to mention an important theory here "information gap model" information gap model).
Ta was proposed by Carnegie Mellon psychologist George Loewenstein. The core idea is that an information gap will occur when we see things that are inconsistent with existing beliefs or cognitions.
This kind of gap can bring about psychological discomfort (unpleasant state in minds), and curiosity helps us get rid of this uncomfortable state by looking for new information. This feeling is a bit like an itchy part of the body. You want to scratch it.
Simply put: When something changes from being known (or what we think is known) to being unknown, we become curious and want to find out.
You must know that curiosity has two portraits. The first one is a question mark, which represents curiosity about the world. The second portrait is a child. When he feels that he does not understand something, he always likes to ask why.
British psychologist Daniel Beilein divides the information gap into "recreational" and "cognitive" .
The former only satisfies the curiosity of , and the attention will quickly shift from one new thing to another.
The latter is based on certain cognition and can allow people to obtain more sources of happiness, provide nutrients for the soul, and even improve people's knowledge.
For example:
We are also in the era of Internet explosion. Recreational curiosity always makes people happy when faced with "eating melon incidents", while cognitive curiosity makes people willing to study in their free time.
The Internet can make people dumber or smarter, part of the reason is here; Therefore, we should reduce our pursuit of recreational knowledge and invest more in cognition.
In marketing, many brands perfectly utilize consumers’ curiosity to fill the gap with awaited information.
When advertising, if the merchant writes complete information directly on the advertisement title, few people will read it carefully because there is too much fragmented information, which is also an ineffective advertising investment.
Effective advertising investment can display some special or fascinating content in the title, like product special effects, or without clear explanation, attracting clicks to fill the information gap.
For example:
If you see a liver protection advertisement that says "Taking XX brand natural cod liver oil can help you improve your IQ", you may think that this is a bland advertisement.
If you see "Here is the secret to help you improve your IQ quickly in one month" will it be more motivational?
These are all ways to fill the information gap. It is somewhat similar to Pandora's Box. explicitly prohibited Pandora from opening the box privately, but in the end he couldn't help but open it.
