Anvita Gupta
Ever wondered why the aisle arrangement keeps changing from month to month, or how the smell of freshly baked bread permeates most large supermarkets throughout the day? It’s the application of consumer psychology.
That delicious fresh bread aroma is deliberately vented to permeate the supermarket itself, because appealing to the senses in this way whilst shopping for food helps to increase impulse sales and the purchase of more goods.
These examples of real-world consumer psychology in action all make perfect sense when you know about them, and similar principles are applied to online retail sales too, and just as effectively.
The appearance and impression given by your online store has just as much of an impact on online consumer behaviour as it does for real-word businesses. This means that your website’s theme and colour scheme should be planned to appeal to your target demographics and support sales. 93% of buyers focus on the visual appearance of the products they are considering, and the store they are browsing for them in.
Illusion of scarcity
Rather than showing status on how many people have purchased a certain type of item, show how many are left available to buy when this drops below a certain threshold, to provide that final push to complete a purchase.
Scarcity encourages us to buy sooner and perhaps to buy more than normal. We saw two excellent examples of this effect this summer with the launches of the iPhone and the seventh Harry Potter book. In both cases, the pre-launch publicity was designed not only to fuel demand but to create the illusion that supplies would be limited. In fact, there were very few supply shortages. In both cases, the marketers anticipated demand levels pretty well.
Delayed gratification
Delivery service, the only seemingly hiccup for online shopping is that you have to wait (3-5 business days, sometimes). But perhaps that is what keeps us coming back for more, and enjoying the process so much, even if we are not aware of it. Could it be a necessary part of the process that keeps us coming back for more? Delayed gratification can enhance our appreciation of things, even if only for a brief period, and will keep us tied up to the entire process, want it, need it, see it, evaluate, eventually choose one out of 3,485 options of shoes, then wait, and finally enjoy (or return).
Delayed gratification has a strong brain response. One study examined the neural basis of delayed gratification by having people choose between obtaining an immediate gift certificate, as opposed to a gift card with a larger amount in the future, In general, people’s reward system (such as dopamine neuron and nucleus accumbens) were highly activated in this task. The future gift certificate people showed more pre-frontal cortex activity, part of the brain responsible for rational planning and decision making.
Online shopping might lead to a dopamine burst when initially making a purchase, but also some additional reward activation while waiting for it to arrive (e.g , while tracking the package, checking the mail, etc).
Your home is a more convenient
changing room
Consumers now expect to find just the right deal or shopping experience for them, at anytime and anywhere . Take rise in shoppers using their homes as a more convenient changing room for example, more shoppers are rejecting retail stores as the best place to make purchase decisions – one-third of people don’t like using fitting rooms. They prefer to buy multiple items to try on at home. People can avoid crowds, crowded stores never create a pleasant experience for the people who shop. Therefore, online shopping is a smoother experience.
Auto-play countdowns keep you engaged
Videos have become one of the biggest players in social media marketing strategies today. In fact, shoppers who view video are 1.81X more likely to purchase than non-viewers . The psychology behind videos in advertising is what can drive the success of your video marketing campaigns.
Think about it – the auto-play videos we see so often on Facebook can sometimes grab our attention where it otherwise wouldn’t have. Companies we’ve never even heard of are popping up on our screens with interesting videos that just start playing on their own without the sound, and sometimes – just sometimes – we’re inclined to push the ‘play’ button to hear what’s going on.
They run the risk of annoyance with the hopes that we capture new leads and can extend our reach. Sure, they may just be a blip on the radar for many, but that blip could be less of an attention-grabber if it weren’t in an auto-play video.
Consumer psychology is widely used by big online brands like Netflix , who employ psychologists within their Consumer Insights Division to help to boost viewer figures and extend viewing times.
Netflix is one of the biggest and best-known companies that integrate consumer psychology into their platform to keep viewers engaged and returning for more. The application of consumer psychology is responsible for those auto-play countdowns to the next episode of your show , the selection of shows recommended for you to watch next, and even the specific thumbnails used for each show, which are personalised to appeal to different types of viewers and may vary from person to person depending on their interests.
So no matter what business you’re in the secret to more sales is understanding the psychology behind consumer behaviour.
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