Tag: sales
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Apple’s Implementation of the Duration-of-Exposure Effect: Screens at 70˚
Hours after writing about the duration-of-exposure effect (whereby merely touching an unowned object increases our attachment to it and how much we value it), a post came into my feed reader pointing out how Apple Inc. take advantage of this effect in their “painstakingly calibrated” stores. Carmine Gallo, providing a glimpse into his upcoming book, The Apple…
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Dark Patterns for Marketers, or: Practical Behavioural Economics
Taking a systematic approach to implementing findings from behavioural economics into a sales cycle can “unlock significant value”, according to McKinsey’s Ned Welch. To help business do exactly that, Welch–in what, at times, reads a bit like a ‘dark patterns guide for marketers’–has written an article looking at four practical techniques from behavioural economics that marketers should use…
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A “Felt Need” Is What Makes Us Buy
A “felt need” is what differentiates a vitamin from an aspirin: when we crave something (relief from pain), a product that satisfies that desire becomes a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. Realising this and re-framing a product in terms of this craving is an important step in ensuring a product’s success, say Dan and Chip…
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Persuasive Infomercial Sales Techniques
I don’t take infomercials very seriously, mainly due to how hilarious and absurd they are. However I’ve now been won over and can see their potential for certain product–market combinations. How did this miraculous change come about? Through a surprisingly enjoyable interview between Andrew Warner and the master of the infomercial, Tim Hawthorne. From his…
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Narratives for Selling Premium Goods: The Grey Goose Story
People want to pay more in order to own luxury goods, but you need to give them a reason to do so. That excuse? A compelling story. One man that subscribed to this idea was Sydney Frank, as is evident from the strategy he developed for Grey Goose: the ‘superpremium’ vodka that Barcardi bought for $2…
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Using Charity to Increase Voluntary Payments
If a business is experimenting with voluntary pricing (‘pay-what-you-want’ pricing), to increase sales and profits give a portion of voluntary payments away to charity (and advertise the fact, naturally). That’s the conclusion from a study by researcher Ayelet Gneezy comparing a number of pricing plans involving–in various combinations–voluntary payments, fixed prices and charitable donations: At…
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Prevention of Attainment Increases Desire, Decreases Attractiveness
Being prevented from obtaining something we desire simultaneously increases our desire for the item and decreases its eventual attractiveness. That’s the counterintuitive result from a study that shows the various surprising effects of “being jilted”. We show how being “jilted”–that is, being thwarted from obtaining a desired outcome–can concurrently increase desire to obtain the outcome,…
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The Influence of Sold-Out Products
Sold-out products create “information cascades” where we infer that the next-best item must also be of a similar high quality and value for money: sold-out items ‘validate’ similar products, persuading us to purchase more readily. “Sold-out products create a sense of immediacy for customers; they feel that if one product is gone, the next item…
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Selling Premium Goods
In a short profile of ‘luxury sales consultant’ Jean-Marie Brücker, we discover a few psychological techniques he teaches to his clients on how to sell high-end luxury goods: Describe an item in terms of its ‘value’ rather than it’s ‘price’ or ‘cost’. Sell a story (‘romance’ and ’emotions’) rather than ‘products’. The macaroon technique: sandwiching the…
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The Transformative Power of a Narrative
Can a narrative attached to an everyday object increase its objective value? That was the question posed by Rob Walker (author of The New York Times‘ Consumed column) and Joshua Glenn (author of Taking Things Seriously) when they started the Significant Objects Project—an experiment designed to test whether a series of stories created about an object…