Behavior : how companies influence your purchases

kikkerdirk/Epictura

Published the 04.08.2017 at 18h24

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Keywords :

marketingpsychologie

A small free sample, this seems trivial, and even generous on the part of a company that wants to market its products. In reality, the act is not that selfless as it sounds. It is a process of psychological by which the consumer will feel obliged, if he accepts the gift, returning the favour and, eventually, to pay the entirety of the product being sampled.

This finding was presented at the 125th annual meeting of the American Society of Psychology. Researchers returned on one of the many subtle mechanisms of psychological persuasion, and the means by which consumers recognize in order to reduce their influence on their behavior.

A “true science”

“Persuasion is not only an art, it is a real science,” said Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and marketing at the university of Arizona. Strong of ten years of research, the scientist has identified six mechanisms by which the enterprises achieve their business purposes through persuasion.

The first of them is the reciprocity, a phenomenon that underlies, therefore, the gift of free samples. Reciprocity leads logically to the second mechanism, namely, the commitment. Once someone has been hooked by the sample, it is more easy to obtain their commitment to pay for the product.

Another principle of persuasion is in the fact of establishing authority. An expert in a field who held a speech promoting a product to generate a form of membership related to its status. Where is the advertising for toothpaste, for example, in which pseudo-dentists swear by this brand of dental paste.

Of persuasion to the manipulation

Finally, humans have group behaviour, and prefer to listen to people who have opinions that are related or similar to them. It is the principle of ” like “, well known on the social networks. Applied to economics, this means that a consumer group of fans of a product will be able to persuade their peers to buy this product.

Finally, consumers will have the tendency to want what they think beyond their reach, inaccessible. This is the principle of scarcity, quantitative or qualitative. Where the promotional offers are limited in time, which does offer accessibility to a product that in a short period of time.

The researcher insists : persuasion may come out of the field of the handling once consumers become aware of the mechanisms that underlie it. Therefore, by discerning buyers, they will be able to make choices free of commercial calculations developed by the marketing departments of the companies.