Don't Fall 👀 For Marketing Trap 🧩 By Brands!
You Are Buying 🛍 More Than You Need - Avoid These Psychological Tricks & Tactics (Part 1)
Consumerism 🏦 has plagued the life of an ordinary person - be it west or a country like Pakistan 🇵🇰. Brands are finding innovative ways to lure the customers to buy the products they might not want or at least not on the price at which the product is being sold for.
I have compiled a list of around 24 tricks and tactics employed in current days by the brands and retail establishments (online 🖱 and bricks & mortar 🏬 both) for which being consumers, you should be wary in order to avoid getting trapped for these marketing gimmicks - I would highly suggest you to let the women 👩💼 in your house also read this as the brands target this segment of society because of less awareness about such stuff.
I can see from my YouTube 📺 analytics that only 6% of the viewers are women - who gets directly impacted as well as can create a meaningful impact on household 🏠 budget, hence their participation in creating a common financial goal is very important for domestic budget!
As mentioned earlier, this list is a bit exhaustive so I am breaking this newsletter into 2 parts [If you are reading this in email, please do consider clicking and reading online for better experience]. This week, I shall be discussing the first 12 points and soon the remaining points will be discussed, so stay tuned for that too. Without beating about the bush, lets dive into those tactics immediately🔻!
Reducing the left digit by 1
This tactic is being employed most of the time specially in high to medium standard physical shopping areas 🏬 OR even online🖱marketplaces. Also refers to as “Charm Pricing” where one digit is reduced after decimal and a $30 would be read as $29.99 - which actually means nothing short of a full price, but this gives a false sense of not paying $30.
Not only for decimal place, there was an experiment conducted by the University of Chicago and MIT, women's clothing was used to test the left-digit effect - first, prices were set for $34, $39 and $44. To the amazement of the researchers, the items sold best at $39 even though that price was more expensive than other options.
This is the very reason I want the women 👩💼 audience to read this piece :-)
Remove the comma
The comma effect is real and I was actually baffled at first when I found out the science 🧪 behind it. Apparently, a number with comma seems bigger and hence the price appears to be on a higher side.
So, the next. time if you see the cars 🚙 prices without comma at dealership, dont get surprised and know the reason behind it as your have read this piece :)
The Gruen transfer
The 'Gruen Transfer' (or 'Gruen Effect') is the point at which shoppers fall into a slightly confused state 🧐 in which they are overwhelmed and entranced by multiple stimuli, and so become more susceptible to advertising, promotion and persuasion.
The Gruen Transfer is named after Victor Gruen, an influential architect of early shopping malls 🛒 - this guy clearly dont want people to stay focused and divert them for confused state of mind urging to explore and spend in the process.
This is the reason, you should make a list of items to purchase before going shopping even for grocery - things can get distracting 😵💫 on purpose!
Use words related to a small amount
Description like LOW MAINTENANCE is more appealing to the consumers than HIGH PERFORMANCE although both qualities are valued like mentioned in the example below.
So, make sure your buying decision - specially for big ticket items like car 🚘 ticks a lot of boxes which you value - not only for the words that the company wants you to focus upon.
Showing price in installments rather than a lump sum
How many times have you found advertisements like this? Actually, i did not want to use local brands advertisement which are full of ugly & loud 📣 instalment's packages & those i dont endorse at all.
The idea which I believe in is that you can only buy a product if you are able to pay in cash 💵 in full - In case, you have a good reason for not paying up cash for certain product, for example, you know you can earn better ROI for your money by investing in a business instead of buying a car from it - then it makes sense, otherwise most of the time buying on installments (even on 0% interest) should not fascinate you.
Small daily equivalent amount
This tactic is further an extension to what have been mentioned in the earlier point. A very good example of this in daily life is when someone justifies a purchase saying “It is even cheaper than my daily consumption of coffee ☕️ at Tim Hortons‼️”
I find it funny when a lot of people justify their Netflix 🎬 subscription converting it to daily rate and telling me its costing as JUST 20 cents (for a specific category) per day which is even cheaper than whatever analogy they want to make. My point always would be, dont deceive yourself by converting the amount on daily level - and secondly from productivity perspective, I dont find value in mindlessly watching Netflix all the time.
Visual contrast between the sale price
Have you noticed that the shopping centers and even on online e-commerce websites 🖱, the sale price 🏷 is always with a different font and/or color? this is because they want you to be attracted towards the offer and buy out of urgency & FOMO! I discussed FOMO, YOLO & JOLO in this clip.
Don’t buy out of FOMO or YOLO sentiments - make your decisions rationally 🤩 and not emotionally 😵.
False sense of urgency
How many times have you seen such banners?
Or anything like this:
Never budge to such tactics, and keep yourself laser focused 💯 on what your goal is - rather than buying things out of urgency created by the brands.
Buy one get one free
This is perhaps the oldest 🛠 technique (at least for me since I have been monitoring these behaviors.) The brands conveniently get rid of old stock through these kind of offers.
Although these offers often times benefit the consumer as well but always consider this before buying such deals: “if you dont want one of them, then you probably won’t need 2 of them” - so again make sure to decide based on your requirements rather than what is being marketed 🛒.
A 50% off would have been much better from consumer stand point - as then you won’t have to spend “extra” for the additional item in case you dont have intention of buying it.
Buy one get XX for free
Now this is the tricky 😵💫 one. Here the brands want you to imagine that you are being given the offer for buy one get one (same as #9) - however, the trick is in the way its marketed and most of the time it has one or multiple of the below caveats:
Buying the expensive item and getting the cheaper one for free.
Buy 2 and get 1 free, or similar options of buying 3 & getting one free.
Buying 1st at full price and second at 50%
Such tricks are employed by the brands and retailers to lure in customers to buy things they might not need even.
Remove the pain of paying
While Uber revolutionized the transportation 🚕 - they also added one more value to entire cab industry where the price is set before starting the ride and customer knows in advance what to pay 💸. This is a less painful way of paying as you won’t be seeing the meter all the time while in the ride ☺️
While this brings convenience - the competition was killed by the likes of Uber & Carem and now people pay a lot more than usual for public transportation after getting addicted to such services.
There is no price for convenience, however, the level of service degradation and price point Uber & Carem has arrived - does not make sense to me atleast to avail them.
Maximizing perceived size of discount
Retailers use the biggest number possible to label 🏷 the discount - for instance 20% off on a 50,000 PKR LED TV 📺 will look better if its mentioned as 10,000/- PKR off in absolute terms even though they are both the same amount.
So the retailers can adjust their marketing strategy for the absolute number vs percentage discount based on how it looks - for consumers, it’s always important to weigh both %age and absolute price in order to judge 👨⚖️ any offer.
🟢 I am half way through this writeup and found that it will be too long for one sitting, so I am breaking this in 2 parts and the next part will some within a couple of weeks. Till that time, don’t forget to subscribe the YouTube channel.
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