- Every single day people and businesses
are making money by selling products.
And you know what, here's the thing.
Usually they're selling products
that we probably didn't need, but even though
we probably didn't need it, after listening
to the marketing pitch, we think, "Yeah, I probably
"don't need this, but I really want it."
And you see, that's the thing.
Successful stores and successful businesses,
they aren't just successful because of luck,
they're successful because they understood
what psychological triggers
make a customer want to buy something.
And they also understand how two people
could be selling the exact same product
and yet everybody will flop to one store
and want to buy it from there,
even though they could've gone to the other store
and bought it for a cheaper price.
And so how do they know what these triggers are?
Well, it is all thanks to psychology and behavioral science.
And so in this video, we're gonna go over
five curious experiments which show us
why people buy products and why they don't.
And trust me, there is also some of these experiments
that are probably going to surprise you,
because when I first started studying
behavioral consumer science, they certainly surprised me.
Plus if you own a business such as an online store,
I'm gonna be giving you actionable tips
on how you can implement these triggers for yourself.
Experiment one, the power of peer pressure.
In San Marcos, California,
a team of behavioral science researchers
decided to do an experiment.
They went around hanging messages on peoples door knobs
that asked people to turn off
their air conditioning and fans.
25% of messages said people should turn off
their fans to help save the environment.
25% of messages said people should turn off their fans
so that they could save $54 over the summer.
25% of messages said people should turn off their fans
so that they could be socially responsible citizens
by preserving energy.
And 25% of messages said people should turn off
their fans because 77% of their neighbors
were using less power than them.
The first three groups of houses
saw no difference in their power usage.
They kept using their fans and AC like normal,
but it worked on the last group
that were given the message about their neighbors.
Their power usage drastically dropped.
Turns out it is true, we do indeed
want to keep up with the Joneses.
As the study showed, possibly the biggest reason
why people take action in life isn't because of themselves,
it's because of others.
That is why I recommend that other people do what I do,
which is following up with the customer
after the sale and getting them to leave a review.
And if you've got an online business,
be sure not to just encourage them to leave a text review,
but also allow the option for them
to submit a photo with it.
That way when other prospective customers
see another customer enjoying their product,
they will want what they have too.
They will want to keep up with the Joneses
and luckily there are lots of apps available online
that you could integrate into online businesses
to help customers leave reviews.
Experiment two, the jam paradox.
In 1995, professor Leanne Good
decided to try something in a gourmet California market.
She set up a booth with the selection of nice jams for sale.
Customers could come and taste them before buying.
After they tried a jam, they would all be given
a $1 off coupon.
Every few hours she alternated how many jams were available.
First she started with 24 jams,
a few hours later she switched to showcasing just six,
and alternated between these two amounts,
and she discovered something.
When there were 24 jams, customers would on average
taste test two jams, and then even after switching
to just six jams, customers would
on average again taste test two jams.
When there were 24 jams, she garnered a large crowd.
More people stopped by, but out of all the people
that taste tested the 24 jams, only 3% decided to buy one,
whereas when she switched to showing off just six jams,
her crowds were 50% smaller, yet despite the smaller crowd,
they spent far more money.
30% of taste testers ended up buying a pottle of jam.
This is an example of the paradox of choice,
and the reason why it's referred to as a paradox
is because of the fact the generally, people think,
"We'll, if I've got more options, that's better, right?"
Well, clearly that isn't true.
Over time the paradox of choice has been extensively studied
and while the studies have shown
it's not quite a clear cut case of, "Oh, this option's good.
"More options, bad!"
Instead, what has been shown consistently
is that if we purchase a product
that has lots of different options
such as lots of different colors
or lots of different flavors, then the overall satisfaction
after purchasing the product is usually much less.
And the reason is obvious, think about it,
let's say that I have 10 jams for sale
and all of them are a variation
of different similar flavors, stone fruit,
I've got an apricot flavor jam, I've got a peach flavor jam,
I've got a jam that's apricot and peach flavored, and so on.
Sone fruits often have similar flavors
and so for a lot of people, they like them all,
but in this case here, you can't buy all the jams,
you can only buy one jam.
So you tentatively choose the apricot jam,
well what tends to happen is that the consumers
who bought the apricot jam go, "Gee, I wonder
"if I would've preferred the peach jam.
"I wonder if I would've liked that one more."
Basically, they experience FOMO, the fear of missing out,
and so that is why, while offering choices
isn't necessarily a bad thing, smart businesses
are careful about when they offer them.
When you choose to offer a choice to a customer,
you need to make sure that each choice is meaningful.
That is why if I give you two choices,
a white T-shirt or a black T-shirt,
both options are so drastically different
that it makes the choice more meaningful.
You're more likely to feel confident
that you made the right choice and not experience FOMO.
Experiment three, the violinist at the metro.
Joshua Bell is one of the most famous
violinists in the world.
Today he is the music director
at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields,
one of the most prestigious orchestras in the world.
He has won three Grammy awards
and has been nominated for a fourth award.
In 2007, Bell and the Washington Post
conducted a behavioral science experiment.
For 45 minutes, Bell performed a basking performance
at the entrance of a Washington D.C. metro station
in a baseball cap and plain clothes.
Now, keep in mind that just two days prior,
Bell had hosted a performance at a theater at Boston
that completely sold out, with tickets
costing on average $100 each.
Not only that, but Bell was performing
with his signature violin, and this violin
is over 300 years old and it's worth millions of dollars.
Bell performed six very complex pieces of music,
and as he performed, 1,097 people passed him by,
and as they did, only seven people stopped by to listen,
while 20 people tipped him money, but kept walking by.
In total, he made just $32,
$20 of that coming from one woman who recognized him.
This is one of the most famous behavioral science studies,
and it shows us something very important.
Every single day, we have so much stuff
that is coming into our brains.
So much information, so much content just so much stuff,
and the only way that our brains are able
to handle this overload of information
is by making assumptions about it
based on the context that it comes in.
If you saw a bunch of kids drinking alcohol at a frat party,
you'd probably assume it was cheap liquor.
But if you saw a group of young professionals
drinking a cocktail in an exclusive speakeasy bar,
you'd probably assume the opposite.
And so what happened was even though Bell
was playing astonishing music
that would normally be extremely expensive
to get the privilege to listen to,
busy commuters saw where he was playing, how he was dressed,
and used the context to determine
that he wasn't worth their time,
rather than actually evaluating what he was offering.
And this can be applied in many ways,
such as with Instagram Influencer marketing.
On Instagram, stores and brands can purchase
Instagram shout outs from Instagram pages.
Those pages will then post your ad on their page
for the agreed amount of time.
At first, everybody was obsessed with buying shutouts
from general mass-appeal pages
like Instagram meme pages because hey,
they had a million followers, that's good, right?
Well actually, if you were selling
this niche travel product, you'd probably have
much greater success posting your ad to micro influencers
who only post travel content even if you pay the same price.
A micro influencer is someone
with just tens of thousands of followers,
who usually focuses on something specific like travel.
And more and more, businesses are focusing
on micro influencers rather than big general pages
because they now understand that where your ad is placed
is very important because consumers
are going to judge that ad based on its context.
Experiment four, the Ross false consensus effect.
In 1997, professor Lee Ross from the Stanford University
decided to conduct an experiment.
He took a group of participants and had them read a story
in which a conflict occurred.
Afterwards they were told that there were two ways
to resolve that conflict, option A and option B.
And they were given three tasks,
task one, guess which of the two options
most people would choose.
Task two, state which option they would choose.
Task three, describe what type of person
would choose option A or option B.
The results were clear, most people said
that others would choose the same option that they chose,
and when describing what type of person
would choose the option that they didn't?
They would make extreme judgements on their personalities.
And I bring this trigger up not because it's happening
in customers, but because it's actually happening
in business owners.
And if they're not aware of it, you know what,
they could lose a lot of money.
For example, several times in this channel
I've talked about how I and several other
successful marketers sell products in our own stores
without price matching our competitors,
and whenever I say that this is possible,
I'll get a swarm of comments of people saying,
"Oh, Sarah, I always go and research
"the lowest price for the products I'm buying.
"Stop giving bad advice."
But you know what, those people, they're wrong!
A huge percentage of the population impulsively
purchase products without price checking,
especially Generation Z, over 80% of them
admitted that they are prone to impulsively buying products.
And so successful businesses are aware
of this cognitive bias that we have
that we think that people do the same things as we do,
and make sure that they tailor their marketing
to what their customer wants and not what they want.
Experiment five, memories control our choices.
In 1965, a study was done on a group of 152 participants.
They were asked a question, if you open up a book
and choose a page at random, what is more likely?
Scenario A, that you will find more words
that start with the letter K.
Or scenario B, you will find more words
where K is the third letter, rather than the first.
The participants were also asked
to guess the difference as a ratio,
how often does scenario A happen compared to scenario B.
The hypothesis of the study was that it's much easier
to remember what words start with K,
like kangaroo or kittens or kites,
therefore people would overestimate it.
And the researchers were right, 105 people guessed
that more words started with the letter K,
with the median ratio being two to one
for words that start with K, compared to words where K
is the third letter, when in reality it's the opposite.
You're far more likely to find words
where K features as the third letter rather than the first.
In this phenomena it has a name, availability heuristic,
and it's a mental shortcut that most of us do
each and every day that smart marketers
and businesses take advantage of each and every day.
If we can remember something, we think that it happens
far more often than it actually does.
And here's how smart marketers take advantage of us
to make more money.
Now you see this avocado slicer here,
the most successful video ads for it
always start with something important.
They start off by reminding the perspective customer
about how in the past, cutting, slicing, and dicing avocados
has been annoying, and the reason for that
is because this will trigger most people to think back
and remember an incident where they found
cutting an avocado to be frustrating.
And this is a curious trigger on our brains because you see,
even if we usually find slicing and dicing avocados
to be absolutely fine, the moment that you remember
an incident where you did find it frustrating,
the availability heuristic mental shortcut
makes you think that it happens far more often
than it actually does, which of course means
you're way more likely to buy this,
and so that is why successful marketing campaigns
will usually start out not by talking about
the features of a product, but rather highlighting
how the product could have solved a past issue
or made something even better to trigger you into,
well, reminiscing about it.
So, did you learn something new?
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And if you would like to learn even more
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