Confessions of a Shopaholic
Happy Sunday! First, I just wanted to say thank you for sticking around and reading my blogs for a full year! I cannot believe how fast the time slipped by me, but I’ve really enjoyed taking you along with me on my daily adventures, along with my travels to London, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, Disneyland, Las Vegas, and beyond. I have some fun blogs planned for 2023 and am excited to share more adventures with you this year!
Today, I thought I would do an opinion piece for a change, and talk about something I am super passionate and curious about, since I do it for a living every single day in sales. This entry will be focused on persuasion tactics, most prominently the techniques we witness EVERY SINGLE DAY but that can often slip by us at a subconscious level. If you’ve taken a high school psychology class, I’m sure these topics will be familiar, but otherwise, I hope they at least make you laugh because they’re super relatable, as they explain why the last time you walked into a supermarket you walked out with 10 items (at least) you didn’t need. Hey, maybe they’ll even explain to ME why I bought yet another pair of cute earrings from the Ballard farmer’s market today…. And do it quickly before I buy another pair😊
1.) Repetition
I’m sure this won’t surprise anyone, but repetition is the key to any kind of sale. If you’re surprised, I offer up my favorite example: Instagram ads for most, if not all, online stores. I cannot count the number of times I’ve scrolled through sites like Shein and Lucy in the Sky, put something in the cart, decided I can live without it, and then went on Instagram….and guess what comes up 60 times? Ads from Shein, Lucy in the Sky, etc. for the exact clothing I had placed in my cart. The first few times this happened, I thought it was a total coincidence, until my parents were discussing going to the Science and Industry museum in Russian, my mom went on Facebook, and found a 20% off coupon for the Science and Industry museum.
The reason this works is because of a psychology concept called the “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” or the frequency illusion effect. Basically, it’s the idea that once you see something somewhere, you begin to think you see it everywhere. So it STARTS with going on Shein once, and then everytime you see it on Instagram, the consistency of it appearing is heightened in your mind. Once this happens, mere exposure effect kicks in, and this is one of the most relatable processes ever. It means that things we see more often in our daily lives gain our trust and comfort whether we consciously recognize it our not. This is what good companies are trying to do ALWAYS. It’s the reason Nike has the classic checkmark logo, McDonalds has the golden arches, and so on. The more we see these symbols (and because they are everywhere, we see them a lot), the more we trust them, so when we need something to eat, they come to our minds first, and bang- a sale is born. When we need new shoes, we think of Nike, when we need cheap clothes, we think of Shein, when I need new earrings, I think of the cute booth at the Farmer’s market that I have passed 100 times and longingly stare at the earrings there. And without a second thought, we give in, and the frequency has magically given way to a sale no one saw coming.
2.) Social Proof
How many stupid products, clothes, culinary fads, etc. have you given into because a friend gave into it first and recommended it to you? I realized the power of social proof when I was scrolling through TikTok and saw a video about the TikTok café, a place that only serves TikTok food trends that would otherwise never have gained popularity. I mean…an entire store that serves only Feta Pasta, Whipped Coffee, and other random foods, for no other reason then that they gained a kind of cult following based off one person who started a revolution.
I think the “why” behind this process is a relatively simple pathway of “A=B, B=C, therefore A=C.” We trust our friends, they trust a product or service…so logically, WE should trust that product or service. And the marketplace trends of 2023 support that this process is the number one decision driver for this generation of shopaholics. From Crumbl Cookies to Lulu Lemon, people will spend ridiculous amounts of money to purchase popular items that others deem “quality”, because we assign trust to these items because of the people who endorse them.
However, the key to this sale driver is that we must first trust the people who recommend these products for us to trust the products. Fun fact: 92 percent of people are more likely to trust unpaid recommendations over other ad types. We are smart consumers, and us Gen Z’ers need to know there aren’t alterior motives at play behind the digital marketing that we are privy too. One sense that an influencer is doing something for their own personal gain and not out of altruistic feelings and we lose our trust in both the person and the sale.
3.) Scarcity
My FAVORITE marketing driver, this is among the most subconscious of the reasons we buy things, whether in a grocery store, on Amazon, or even on sites like Booking.com. A few months ago, I was looking for a hotel for a trip to Leavenworth on Booking.com and saw a nice hotel that looked like one I might be interested in. I was about to write it down as a potential option and move on, when I noticed the bolded red font across the page flashing the words: ONLY ONE LEFT. BUY NOW.
Without giving it another thought, I immediately texted my friend and told her I had found not just A hotel, but the perfect hotel for us. I had it booked and added to my calendar all within the next ten minutes. About an hour later, as I was folding laundry, I realized I had just been victim to the scarcity mindset.
One of the coolest psychological discoveries I’ve ever made is that color is actually often chosen in marketing intentionally in order to stir up emotions in consumers. According to Elliot and Maier (2012) and color-in-context theory, green and blue are meant to be experienced as relaxing and agreeable, whereas yellow and red are meant to be arousing and simulate a negative, forceful response. In fact, studies go as far as to suggest that the color green is meant to be an emotionally calming tool to focus attention inward while the color red provokes an outward emphasis and urgency towards doing something one wouldn’t expect.
Suddenly, I’m rethinking that my teachers only every used red on bad test scores because their green pens ran out of ink. That is all part of the system of teaching you, over time, to not only associate red with instability, but to provoke you into taking action and “fixing” the mistakes you made. And suddenly, the red font on Booking.com makes more sense too. The red is literally flashing urgency in your mind, so without spelling it out on the surface, you feel like you need to take action before it is too late. This is how scarcity works. When you see “only one left” on Amazon or see only five cans of chicken broth on shelf, you convince yourself you need whatever it is more because your urgency reflexes kick in and tell you to take action. So a multitude of companies will spark sales this way, by taking things into the backroom and convincing you to BUY. Remember how I said I bought those earrings? When I made the sale, the booth owner said I had made the right decision because these were actually so popular that this was the last pair they had. 20 minutes later, on my way home I passed the booth, only to see the exact same woman putting the exact same pair of earrings out on the table. But hey… a little social proof and little scarcity mindset had already worked its magic.
4.) Reciprocity and Likeability
I love talking about these topics hand-in-hand because they are often used in marketing to play off of each other. Ever been in the mall and been annoyingly targeted by what seems like every store by someone with a sample or “small gift”? At first glance, this may seem bogus, since only about one in every 20 customers will actually make the sale, so why waste product on people who won’t end up as customers? However, this is actually very intentional, due to reciprocity theory.
Turns out, when someone gives you something, you feel like you owe them something back. Research shows that people love freebies, and the more they feel like they’re getting something as a random act of kindness rather than a marketing tactic, the more they’ll often fall prey to marketing charms. In his book, The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini included a fun study called “The Mint Study” that demonstrated the principle of reciprocity. A waiter tips increased by 3% after diners were given a free mint. They were increased by 14% when given two mints. If the waiter left one mint with the bill and returned quickly to offer a second mint, the tips increased by 23%. Basically, the more special people felt, the more they thought they should offer the waiter something in return. And suddenly, I’m left wondering how much I’ve tipped at Olive Garden…because those Andes mints are just TOO good.
Free trials, loyalty programs, business cards, and even follow-up feedback emails are all examples of reciprocity at play. For marketers and advertising agencies, they often rely on emotional reciprocity, which is basically likeability. By making consumers feel like friends rather than just people purchasing something, they can establish a line of trust and mutual collaboration around the buyer-seller interaction. This falsely makes the consumers feel like they’ve gained back power, and because they trust the people who are selling to them, the sale becomes more likely. In my day-to-day job, I’m told to always be listening to the consumer because it is far easier in sales to sell someone something that they’ve been subtly asking for then forcing something down someone’s throat. Like I’ve said before, our generation is filled with informed, relationship-driven buyers…and we want to feel like the commercials we watch and salespeople we talk to our working for us, not for their brands. Next time you apply to a subscription program or take a food sample at Costco, remember that even things that seem “no-strings-attached” still have at least a few strings hanging.
5.) Finally, Commitment and Consistency
When you think of the people you hold close in life, they are probably people who commit to you and who don’t change personalities every day- or at least that’s what I hope for all of you. Advertising agencies know that that’s also key to sales… and that is why they have mission statements, almost as if they are promising you a consistent experience. One of the greatest things that can derail a business is a bad review, which is why companies try to make experiences as authentic and positive for their consumers.
And yet, nothing is worse than when a business you trusted ultimately lets you down. This winter break, my family and I booked a trip with Frontier airlines, and they ended up cancelling our entire trip due to weather and overbooked flights. And while the weather was largely at fault for this situation, such a negative experience can quickly blow up, and with social media in the equation, threaten a company’s entire reputation. One of the coolest examples of this I’ve hard of in my communication classes happened when Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician, flew United Airlines back in 2008, with his guitar in baggage. After a few employees handled the instrument poorly, he discovered his $3,500 guitar had been badly damaged. When his claim with United failed to get any attention, he went public with his story by writing a new hit entitled “United Breaks Guitars”. Within four weeks of posting it, #Unitedbreaksguitars began trending on Twitter and United’s stock price fell by 10%, amounting to an insane $180 million lost in value.
With social media making company visibility higher than ever before, companies need to present a consistent front and give their consumers experiences that match expectations. While it might seem counterintuitive, this is actually why many advertising agencies will use food tricks to deceive consumers into trying their food and expecting it to look like that across the board. Fun fact: In just some of the food ads you’ve probably seen that have made you run to the nearest fast food place- motor oil is used instead of syrup, glue instead of milk in cereal, brown shoe polish for hamburger meat, mashed potatoes for ice cream, and hairspray for a shiny finish to many grocery or restaurant ads. Not everything is what it seems, and you have to look no further than most company policies and commercials.
There are plenty more everyday marketing techniques that sneak up on you online, via social media, and in almost every store you find yourself in. Even in a farmer’s market, you never know when a pair of earrings will catch your attention, but knowing about these techniques puts you in the marketers shoes so you can wrestle a little harder with yourself before buying everything in sight.
Please let me know if you’d like me to do more cool psychology concepts that get all of us and if you enjoyed this blog, and hope you all have a safe, exciting week. One shopaholic to another, I’m signing off for now.