6 Psychological Triggers that Win Sales and Influence Customers

Whenever anyone asks me what marketing books I recommend that will help them sell more, the very first one I point them to is “Influence” by Robert Cialdini, published in 1984.

A professor of psychology and marketing, Cialdini lays out six ways you can get people to say yes to what you're asking. Anyone who sells things for a living, online or offline, should know, love, and live these principles:

• Reciprocity
• Commitment & Consistency
• Liking
• Authority
• Social Proof
• Scarcity

Let's take a look how you can build some of these influence triggers into your online store to start getting more sales and customers.

1. Reciprocity

The principle of reciprocity means that when someone gives us something we feel compelled to give something back in return. Have you ever gone to Costco ended up with an unplanned sausage purchase in your cart because you felt a nagging obligation to buy because you tried a free sample? Well, that was the principle of reciprocity in action.

Of course, online retailers can’t personally visit the house of each person who interacts with them to shove a sample in their hand. So how can you make reciprocity work for you?

Free Gift With Purchase

You might not be able to offer something in advance, but you can definitely offer something alongside. This tactic is a favorite of cosmetic and beauty products as demonstrated below by Ultra Beauty.

Even if you don’t advertise the gift in advance, slipping samples of other products into your shipped product can create the feeling of having received a gift that might earn you a second purchase.

The Gift Of Content

Content can be a good way for online retailers to provide value to potential customers—in effect, giving them a gift. For example, StyleSeek presents new users with a fun quiz they can go through to reach recommendations for clothes that match what they like:

True & Co, an online lingerie retailer, helps women figure out the right size and style of bra for them:

So whether it’s a guide for how to make the perfect vinaigrette or an exclusive author interview, use content as an ethical bribe that makes people feel grateful towards your business. 

2. Commitment & Consistency

The principle of commitment and consistency says that people will go to great lengths to appear consistent in their words and actions - even to the extent of doing things that are basically irrational.

That’s why if you’re trying to make a change in your life - losing weight, for example - it can be very helpful to state your goal publicly. Once you’ve committed out loud (or online) you will have much more incentive to keep up your end of the bargain.

As a retailer, if you can get customers to make a small commitment to your brand (like signing up for your email newsletter), they are more likely to eventually purchase from you. And if you can actually get products in their hand, even if there is no official commitment to buy them, your chances increase even more.

This is the principle behind Warby Parker’s Home Try-On Program:

Warby Parker knows that with a product that sits right in the middle of your face all day, look and fit are important. They also know that if they can get a set of frames in your hands, they are probably about 50% of the way to making a sale. So they make it as frictionless as possible - order the samples, get the box, order the frames you want, and send the box back for free. They say there's no commitment, but they are wise students of Cialdini - they know the customer feels the commitment the minute they open the box.

Zappos’ famously easy return policy is another example of this - there is less friction for the customer to buy because they know that if they don’t like it they can return it. But once they have the product in their hands, will they really return it? Probably not. They're already committed.

3. Liking

The principle of liking says that we are more likely to say yes to a request if we feel a connection to the person making it. That’s why the sausage sample lady at Costco is always giving you a nice smile.

It’s also why brands hire celebrities to endorse their products - so that people will transfer their love of Roger Federer to watches he’s endorsing.

There are lots of ways to make this principle work for your store:

Telling Your Story

As a direct-response marketer I tend not to truck much with branding. But if there’s one place that branding is essential, it is in triggering the principle of liking.

Every element of your store - colors, fonts, photo styles, copy - contributes to your brand personality, and your goal is to create a personality that is cohesive and that your target customer will like. This might be brisk and efficient if you are selling into a business market, warm and playful if you’re selling children’s products, 'earth-mothery' if you’re selling natural products.

Many stores will include something like an “About Us” page that is basically brand personality distilled. Here’s an example from Hiut Denim Co:

And one from jewelry designer Elva Fields:

This is a great way to sum up your story and to get people to like you.

Use Models People Can Identify With 

If you’re selling clothing, jewelry, or accessories, one quick way to create a connection to your customer is to show your stuff on people they will identify with and like. This doesn’t mean you need to book Russian supermodels; it’s best if they look like your customers. This might mean funky and cool, like So Worth Loving:

Casual and athletic, like Title Nine:

Or preppy, like Southern Marsh:

Social Links

People are more likely to purchase something if it’s recommended to them by someone they know and trust. So make sure that your product pages have links to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ so that your customers can tell their friends about the great product they just found on your site.

I know this sounds obvious, but I had to poke around to find examples, especially with smaller stores. But tea shop Little Sparrow is doing it right:

And so are more well known brands, like Fab:

Display What Others Are Buying

Have you ever noticed someone wearing the same shoes or shirt as you and mentally saluted their fine taste? You probably felt a quick connection with that person based solely on that one data point.

Stores can play off that idea by presenting products that are similar to what the person is browsing, as seen here in the online store for the comic The Oatmeal:

4. Authority

Most people have heard of the famous Milgram experiments, in which volunteers were convinced to continue delivering what they thought were incredibly painful electric shocks to unseen subjects, even when they could hear (faked) screams of pain. The presence of a man in a lab coat telling them to continue was enough to earn the compliance of nearly all the volunteers.

People appear hard-wired to respond to authority (or the appearance of authority). How can you use this to sell?

Expert Creation

Does your product have a scientific secret sauce? Display content from professionals with credentials likeHerbalife:

Is it hand-crafted by trained artisans? Tell the world all about them like Dodocase:

And of course books are another great example of this. Are you more likely to buy a run-of-the-mill book about how to cook French Food… or one by Jacques Pepin? Cookbook Village knows that big names sell books and they have a whole section for big name chefs:

Expert Curation

These days the range of products available to a shopper are so vast it’s hard to wade through them all—and that’s why “curation” has become the buzzword of the moment.

Do you have a Chief Stylist (or someone who could reasonably pass for that)? Have a page with her top picks for the season. Selling fitness products? Have a personal trainer give his favorite picks. Even a little authority is enough; Kepler’s Books provides recommendations from each of their staff members:

5. Social Proof

The principle of social proof is connected to the principle of liking: because we are social creatures, we tend to like things just because other people do as well, whether we know them or not. Anything that shows the popularity of your site and your products can trigger a response.

Have you gotten good press? Mention it! Received loving emails from customers? Quote them! Gotten good feedback from your mom? Heck, get it up there. Look, cute tableware purveyor Camila Prada has done all three:

Another tactic is to provide a “Best Sellers” or “Most Popular” page, as demonstrated by Black Milkbelow. Are the anatomically-correct muscle leggings really their most popular, or just the ones that are most piled up in the warehouse? As a consumer, I don’t know. But by declaring these particular leggings the most wanted, Black Milk has given them a sheen of desirability.

And of course, ratings and reviews, a la Amazon & countless other retailers, are another fine way to show social proof.

6. Scarcity

Cialdini’s final principle is the principle of scarcity, which states that people are highly motivated by the thought that they might lose out on something. Call it the Eternal Teenager Principle: if someone tells you that you can’t have it - boy, do you want it. This is probably the one I’m the biggest sucker for, personally.

Marketers trigger this effect by using all kinds of tactics to suggest that products (or low prices) might soon be gone, or that someone is trying to keep this product off the market.

Deadlines For Sales

Lily Pulitzer is counting down to the second when she her summer sale prices will become unavailable.

Impending Out-Of-Stock Announcements

You want that cute toy box from ModMom? Well, you’d better hurry - there are only three left!

Seasonal or Limited Products

Every March when my friend gets her green Shamrock Shake from McDonalds she crows with happiness all over the social media. Think she’d be that excited if she could walk in and get it any time? Of course not. The knowledge that the supply is limited motivates her—and makes her feel like a success for having “won.”

And speaking of me being a sucker for this tactic, that’s exactly how I feel about my Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks.

 

But What About Pricing?

You may be wondering where the extremely common retail tactics of sales & discounts fall under these six principles. Is Cialdini saying that price doesn’t impact people’s purchasing behavior?

Of course it does, and Cialdini mentions a couple of pricing experiments in the beginning of his book. But think of it this way: the price of your product represents the size of a risk someone is going to take on. In other words, people will be a lot more choosy over a $10,000 product than one that is $1.

Risk Removal

The six principles of influence represent additional non-obvious ways to impact perceived risk. For example, by using appeals to authority, you're decreasing the risk of a 'yes' - someone who says yes (to your appeal to buy a product) can always point to the authority you've demonstrated to rationalize their purchase. By using scarcity tactics, you're increasing the risk of a 'no' - someone who declines your offer right now might miss out.

So given a price that you have settled on for your products, using the principles of influence can decrease the risk of 'yes' (liking, social proof, authority) or increase the risk of 'no' (scarcity, consistency, reciprocity).

Sprinkle them throughout your site and watch your sales go up!

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Psychology of Online Buyers – Web Design Tricks for an Online Store to Sell More

We are constantly manipulating human consciousness as everyday life as in business. Skilled craftsmen of a psychological impact turn us into docile audience, ready to purchase each advertised product. Online commerce thrives due to numerous methods of suggestion and direct persuasion.

First of all you need to study the ways of interaction between your website and visitors. Various surveys will be really helpful; by the way you can install heat-map plugins onto your website thus track most interesting content.

These observations will help you understand wishes of your customers and using engaging techniques given below you will increase their interaction thus you’ll enlarge your sales.

Further we’ve provided numerous psychological techniques that will stimuli your sales. For the sake of your shop learn to use these approaches and soon you’ll have a positive result of your work.

Use the knowledge of the general psychology of mass consumer

It’s known that standard selling methods, which work for supermarkets are the main strategies applied by online shops. Profit and number of visitors who make a purchase can be increased using uncomplicated marketing actions, such as:

1. Place most profitable products to the best positions;
2. Combine complementary product samples (wine and cheese, slippers and pajamas) in one category;
3. Display them on a single page of search results.

And how close do complementary products coexist for you, – put them at least in a row to draw user’s attention to the fact that they may need one of those.

Start from small things

Analyze user reaction to each and every minor change in design:

1. Changes in shape/color of buttons;
2. Changes in color of content and background image in the header.

Free Google Website Optimizer is a great tool designed to help you ease website testing quality.

Promotion, variation of prices and interest rates

Have you read “Marketing Experiments” by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, he said that most consumers perceive the price stated first in a row, as average and standard. That is, when announcing the sale “with discounts from 15 to 30%,” you need to realize that people will expect 15% discount on larger amount of products, and 30% for just a few ones. That’s why it’s really important to state in the header the phrase: “discount up to X%” and in general use the phrase “up to” not to confuse people. By the way, did you notice that “to” sounds more convincing than “over”? If you specify prices in dollars, better inform your visitors of minimum values, like starts “from $15″, which looks much more attractive than “$15 – $40.” However, using such ambiguous wording, you probably should ensure the availability of footnotes, which set out the terms of discounts, and set them out very clearly. Otherwise, you may experience some fracas with those customers, who didn’t delve into the matter, and the page where they can be addressed, will be an excellent proof of your innocence.

Buyers are susceptible to offers of free shipping, and can even prefer $15 shipping to a $20 discount. Try to benefit from these oddities of human thinking. Skillfully manipulating the figures and percentages, you will attract people with enticing banner ads, themes, messages when sending newsletters, etc.

I guess you’ve seen following price tags: $99.95 or $49.95. The trick is in subconscious perception of these numbers, they are closer to $90 or $40 thus against all logic, they do not distort the real value of this amount. A series of experiments showed that the goods price at $9.99, were sold twice as much as $10.00 ones! Incredible, isn’t it? This method is more suitable for consumer-Americans. Moreover, it works much better with certain product groups.

Use the principle of reciprocity

This principle is clearly described in Robert Cialdini’s “Psychology of Persuasion. In short, you wish to provide a service in respond to any courtesy. This behavioral norm has been instilled to all of us since early childhood. Our parents teach us to be polite and show appreciation for any favor, thus making us susceptible to psychological influence. They make us believe that people will not like us if we deny giving a back favor. Sale – is an analogue of the favor, to some extent it requires you reciprocal actions. Online stores offer additional bonuses, discount coupons, more expensive analogues of an exact product, in order for the customers to answer with a courtesy and buy those products. The principle is simple, as breath-in breath-out. And it’s not even the price: if raise it before Sale, anyway visitors will not come and buy.

Beautiful design web store

It’s been proved that nice-looking shop assistants sell more, and the court is more favorable to attractive people. Online store visitors are driven with same approach as judges with lacking opportunity to meet you closer, they rely on the first impression. Human subconscious ingrained an idea that beautifully decorated shops are much better that all other ones.

Use pictures that “have a character”.

Use photos that appeal to your senses, don’t forget that users “find interesting” photos with attractive individuals of both sexes. Allow your viewer to “smell the smoke”, “feel the sweat”, taste the wine and experience the embrace simply looking at those photos.

To make pictures come alive look for moments with beautiful light, pleasing back-round and most importantly, make sure that your pictures convey some kind of emotion: be it sadness, fear or happiness. It is said that eyes are the mirror of the soul so capture what you see in your subject’s eyes. Keep in mind, hands are also very expressive.

First person information presentation

According to the statistics, people are attracted to texts bearing personality imprint.

Imagine this: you open the page of a computer store, you see a bunch of products offered to you in an indifferent and detached manner, it makes you feel isolated all those buttons, images, and registry items. Wouldn’t it be more pleasant to interact with a “cart” that addresses you personally as if it’s human. You need to make your customers feel as if you want to get to know them, or show the human-like face of your brand. Positive feedback scores and chat with the audience in first person adds credibility to you as a professional, outlining your brand identity.

Simplicity and accessibility of “shorthands”

People trust only those things and notions they understand. That’s why; try to present instructions and call-to-actions clearly. Visual clues and pointers to the page of your store should be clearly visible and understandable so that users could easily find what they came for. “Interconnections” between navigation symbols of your website should give a convincing image of your company.

Upselling Offers

What’s an upselling offer? These products are usually placed on the checkout page or directly on the page with description of a goodie. You can offer additional services, facilities, advantages in terms of warranty or delivery to buyers of certain goods. What you need to do? Make an additional premium offers that will sound as real “baits”, in a good sense! For example, upselling products are usually the best choices to meet customer requirements.

Binding of prices

This technique gives you an possibility to vary various values. Prices and package are distributed the way that customers choose more expensive products, thus the difference between these products is not that high. For ex., Amazon.com offers a free “super-economy” delivery of any order worth over $25.

This is how this technique works.

If you offer a choice from three variants of designs: “web version”, “print version only” and “web + print” at prices $59, $125 and $135, respectively, you’ll notice that most customers prefer the third one. However, if you remove “print version only”, you’ll reduce your profits, since most people will choose cheaper “web version.”

Psychology of color perception as a marketing tool

Everyone knows that certain colors naturally affect emotions and human physiology, you always have to consider the characteristics of the environments that belong to your potential visitors. Colors are perceived differently on all continents and almost in all cultures. Therefore, it would be good to find out something about color theory, before you start building the layout of your future store. Competently composed color combinations will help you attract more loyal users.

Some more interesting stuff: Neuro-Marketing tips and tricks

Decision-making Process

Now let’s talk about one more interesting thing, i.e. the decision making. Do you know how humanz make decisions? If you’re not a psychologist-behaviorist, or if you are not studying psychology/behavior of primates, than this part of article will be very interesting for you.

How it works?

Human brain can be divided into numerous parts, ancient ones – that developed millions and millions of years ago and more recent ones – those we’ve obtained when got on two feet. If we did not evolve, we would still look like those proto-primates resembling squirrel from the “Ice-age”.

Decisions we make come from that ancient part of our brain, and it’s called – the Reptilian part. It responds for the basic necessities of survival: sleeping, breathing, reproduction, response to external stimuli and it controls decision-making action. That’s why it’s really important to make some actions that will appear to this part, and use the language that it understands the best. Two other brain sections, the “New Brain” and the “Middle Brain” have a supporting role.

1. The New Brain is a pure logics, it makes deductions based on facts and data, later sharing it with other two parts.
2. The Middle Brain produces emotions. It processes intuitions and feelings, and then shares its discoveries.
3. The Reptilian part is a decision-maker.

Luckily you can always figure out some ways on how to influence even the most stubborn person.

Basically, there are four dead-simple tricks!

• Diagnose the pain – reptilian part “wants” to avoid pain at any cost. Here you need to show how your product will “cure the pain” and “relieve the frustrations”;
• Differentiate your claims – you need a hook that shows how your product stands apart from others, create a real contrast to help the Reptilian part see you as special and decide in your favor;
• Show benefits – show it the gain it will get from choosing your product, you need to demonstrate concrete evidence of your benefits using simple and easy to understand messages;
• Deliver your message – to complete your effective sales technique, your messages and presentations should be filled with visual stimuli and emotions that grab the attention of the Reptilian part and cause it make a buying decision in your favor.

Neuro-marketing Concept

Neuro-marketing is the latest form of marketing study aimed at studying brain’s responses to advertising including messages and images. It assumes that human brain has discrete functional areas that manage consumer behavior which is mostly driven by the subconscious. This advanced technique allows to influence our subconscious. With Neuro-marketing you can develop effective marketing mix that will satisfy consumers better (what is the main objective of marketing). Eventually Neuro-marketing study will be used to customize products and marketing communications according to the brain type of potential customers.

Neuro-marketing study provided marketers with a secret weapon that is focused on making websites more engaging. Some of these tips can be familiar to most of us, but when used together, these tips will be your weapon of mass attraction.

1. Too many choices – if people have too many choices they will not choose at all, that is strange but it’s the fact, the wider the range of products is, the more time user needs to choose the one (you can try to reduce the amount of similar products);
2. Social validation – reviews and testimonials, users consider reviews of other customers more important than those submitted by the experts, or provided by the website specialists (try to engage your customers in submitting reviews considering the products they’ve acquired);
3. Scarcity principle – if something is unavailable it is considered to be more valuable;
4. Food, sex and danger – powerful triggers for action (feel free to use but not overuse);
5. Power of faces – fusiform facial area, part of a brain that makes us focus on the faces of people, when using pictures of people make sure they look right;
6. Story – information that is presented in a form of a story is processed better, you can personalize your fact presentation with your own thoughts if it is appropriate (this will be effective when presenting video reviews of the products you offer);
7. Commitment – by asking small commitments you will get more loyal customers after some time, similar to social validation.

Conclusion

Tips provided in this article will help you increase website usability and user response, when used right they will help you achieve sky-high conversion rate and you’ll get a handle on the best way to present design and content that entices visitors and helps generate business to your company. One thing needs to be pointed out these tips won’t be helpful if you don’t have a solid product or service to begin with, so get that down first. The rest will only serve to deliver it to the consumers successfully.

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11 Marketing Psychology Tips to Tap Into Buyers’ Minds

Perhaps unsurprisingly, psychology has emerged as one of the most useful tools used by marketers. It gives us a glimpse into workings of the human mind, along with some useful techniques for subtly influencing it. Below are 11 useful tips that you can use to improve your customer engagement and your conversion rate.

1. Engage the Senses

Buying anything online can be a tricky proposition; people don’t necessarily have a chance to really see or touch the product before they commit to buying it. As a result, you’ll want to help your customers feel as though they know the product intimately. This can include high-quality product shots or testimonials from other customers. In other words: make them feel as though they already own it.

2. Use Emotion to Your Advantage

Humans are emotional creatures, and our range of feelings can be easily played to. The most effective marketing techniques have nothing to do with spewing product specs or shouting about how low prices are; instead, they’ve become about telling a story, about making the audience feel a deep and personal connection with the brands they interact with.

Related Resources from B2C
» Free Webcast: How to Craft the Ideal Content Strategy for Your Facebook Page

3. Assuage Suspicions

Most of us are naturally suspicious; after all, the Internet is full of people who are only too willing to take advantage of overly trusting people. To that end, guiding customers along toward conversion involves no small amount of reassurance. Try to anticipate potential doubts or suspicions, and then do your best to reassure your customers. There are many ways to do this, such as backing up your claims with authoritative sources and providing reviews from existing customers.

4. Offer Exclusivity

There’s no getting around the fact that online retailers and “big box” brick-and-mortar stores can be both cheaper and more convenient than buying direct. The solution to that problem lies in exclusivity; offer something that they can’t get anywhere else, and you’ll tap into customers’ love of owning something uncommon.

5. Provide Flexibility

If there’s one thing online shoppers hate, it’s a lack of flexibility. This can include everything from the checkout process itself to shipping and payment options. Don’t force customers to register; allow them to check out as a guest if they wish. In addition, offer a variety of payment options to make sure that nobody is left out.

6. Offer Fewer Choices

This one might seem just a little bit strange, but it definitely plays to a well-established phenomenon in psychology. People tend to get overwhelmed when presented with more than one or two choices, which is why it makes sense to simplify your product offerings. By offering just a few very clear-cut choices to customers, you’re helping to ensure that they don’t lose their momentum in the face of an array of potentially confusing options.

7. Draw Comparisons

Customers want to know that you stand behind your product. One way to demonstrate that confidence is to compare your offerings to those of your competitors. Show them in black and white why your products stand out from the crowd.

8. Take Advantage of Crowd Mentality

The reason why social media marketing is so effective is because people love “belonging” – that is, they love being a part of emerging trends. If you can, find a way to tie social media into your product offerings; reveal just how many people have clicked that “Buy” button, or how many people in their networks have subscribed.

9. Explain the Benefits to Your Customers

Whether online or offline, impulse buying is an important thing to capitalize on, and tends to be fairly effective in the eCommerce world. That said, more expensive or involved purchases need to play the game of reciprocity. If you’re expecting your customers to commit to making a big decision, whether it’s parting with their money or simply giving up their personal information, they need to have a very clear idea about what’s in it for them. Don’t by shy about explaining, clearly and concisely, in a way that will provide a feeling of self worth, precisely what they’ll be getting out of the arrangement.

10. Don’t “Sell” – “Impress” Instead

People staple their wallets shut and it takes a crowbar to get them open. The crowbar is, in this sense, direct advertising and propaganda. Show people the same ad enough times (20+) and they might finally cave in, at least once. However, there are other less intrusive and arguably more commendable paths to get wallets open without even showing them a product. This is content marketing psychology working at its finest. For example:

This infographic showcases, as you would guess, the world’s fastest roads. It’s filled with beautiful visuals and insightful statistics. This is content marketing. But, at a more subtle level, there is a psychological process going on. We are engaging the brand by sharing the infographic on social media with our friends and peerswhich is a type of referral. We comment about it which is a type of rating. By creating referrals and ratings in a setting free of “get your wallets out folks!” we soften the staple and remove the need for crowbar marketing.

11. Stop Forcing the Issue

It’s only too easy to start thinking that you have control over somebody’s behavior. The truth is that all we can do is attempt to influence, guide, and inform; when it comes to clicking the “Buy” or “Subscribe” button, only the customer can make that decision. Anything that attempts to push them more forcibly is only going to come across as off-putting or desperate. What you have to do is state your case clearly; what they do with that information is ultimately up to them.

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The psychology of impulse purchase

Here's a new entrepreneur guest blog on the psychology of impulse purchase and what it has to do with entrepreneurs...

Retailers have been cashing in on impulse buying for decades. Theres probably no better example of this than supermarkets, where customers preferences are boiled down to a science: candy is placed at kids eye level, marked-down items all but jump off the shelves, and essentials like milk are shoved to the back so that shelf upon tempting shelf lies between them and the customer.


Youd think the recession would have curbed that, but no: a 2010 survey, Harris Interactive', commissioned by the National Endowment for Financial Education, shows that no less than 80% of Americans made an impulse buy in the past year. Its bad news for consumers - more than two out of three impulse buyers in the survey admit they regretted their purchases shortly after - but the implications for business owners are promising.


First, what drives impulse purchases? There are different views on this. According to Engel and Blackwell in 1982, an impulse purchase is anything you didnt have the intention of buying when you first entered the store, but bought anyway. Phillips and Bradshaw, in 1993, narrowed it down to the point of sale, saying a buyer can constantly change her mind about an item all the way to checkout. But Dennis Rook, in his 1987 paper The buying impulse, provided todays generally accepted definition: a sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately.


How impulse buys happen


An impulse purchase starts with exposure according to Specialty Retail Report. Its all about seeing the product - thats why supermarkets are paid a premium to put certain products on the front line. The next step is problem recognition: the product will remind the customer of a problem that the product in question can solve. Take, for example, the lumping together of chips, popcorn, and soda. A buyer may only come for a bag of chips, but the whole arrangement reminds him of his last movie night. So he grabs a 2-litre orange soda, and since hes already there, figures he might as well pick up some popcorn.


Entrepreneur Virgil Klunder pares it down further to just two things: pain and pleasure. Every customer buys to avoid pain or heighten pleasure, and the easier it is for them, the more likely the product will sell. It sounds simple enough, but millions of dollars are poured into market research every year in search of the straightest line to customer satisfaction.


Online, it happens a little differently. The general belief used to be that price was the main driving force in impulse purchases, an idea brought forward by consultancy firm Ernst & Young in 2000. But a study by User Interface Engineering found that only around 8% of impulse buys arise from special prices or promotions. Rather, it appears, people simply think of buying one item while shopping for another. Users who surf the website using category links were around three times more likely to make an impulse purchase than those who found the item through search engines. The latter takes them directly to the product they need, so theres little to no exposure to the rest of the store. By contrast, navigating the site is the online equivalent of zigzagging through the whole store.


The Costco effect and other case studies


Costco, the largest warehouse club in the US, uses a unique business model to maximize impulse buying. In an interview with The New York Times, the companys chief financial officer Richard Galanti said they work out what customers really want and stock a small number of popular items, say the top 4,000. This contrasts with the business models of Wal-Mart, which stocks up to 100,000 different items, or a typical grocery, which can stock around 40,000.


This promotes impulse purchases by limiting peoples options to trendy, popular items, which include anything from consumer electronics to packed lunches. They cater equally to bargain-seekers and the brand-conscious. They also create a sense of urgency by rotating items on a seasonal basis, urging people to buy on impulse because the item may be gone when they come back.


Apple exploits impulse buying using another model, that of associated buys. The company makes only a fraction of its fortune from hardware sales; the bulk comes from selling content for these gadgets for as low as $1, according to marketing consultant Jeff Bullas, apps for the iPhone and iPad are made by third-party providers, eliminating development costs for Apple while allowing them to charge a 30% commission on sales. Impulse purchase fits in nicely with this setup because $1.99 for a cute little game doesnt usually call for a lot of introspection. People just go ahead and buy it because its just two bucks - but when there are 200 million of them, the money gets serious.


Online retailers such as Amazon have combined impulse buying psychology with targeted marketing, recommending products based on a specific users purchase history. While supermarkets take a slight gamble at the checkout counter - not every customer will want breath mints - e-commerce sites make it so that the checkout is lined with things a buyer will most likely be interested in. A perennial book buyer will be bombarded with books from the same author or genre; one who has recently purchased a camera may be offered lenses, filters, and bags. And by eliminating the physical task of walking to the counter, these sites make impulse buying all the more effortless, according to Main Street, an online financial magazine.


Promoting impulse buys


Rook outlined five characteristics that define an impulse purchase:


An overwhelming attraction to the product

An intense need to buy the product at once

Ignoring negative consequences that may arise from the purchase

A feeling of excitement at buying the product

Conflicting feelings of indulgence and self-control

Obviously, when one makes an impulse buy the first four urges win over, and the self-control factor is brushed aside. To take advantage of impulse buying psychology, businesses must cater to these urges. Chintan Bharwada, marketing expert and contributor at focus.com advises businesses to relieve the negative feelings tied to impulse (e.g. guilt over unplanned spending) and highlight the non-economic rewards (e.g. contentment over a new gadget). Basically, their advertising should say, So its $500 you never meant to spend, but hey, youve got a nice new home theater! A complex environment that gets in the way of rational thinking, and thus makes impulses seem stronger, can also go a long way.

This also means eliminating the risk of an impulse purchase, according to Bharwada. This can be done through straightforward return policies and readily available credit. Knowing that they can change their mind, or at least not have to pay up in full if they do, makes an impulse buy seem less of a bad thing.


The new consumer


More recent research suggests that the old idea - that impulse buys should be displayed at the checkout counter - may be out-dated. For example, according to an Inc.com article, the cashier may not always be the best spot to put last-minute items because impulsiveness tend to die down the longer a customer stays in the store, and the more options they are presented with. However, they say, the urge can be rekindled through properly placed signs and promotions.


Most of our examples have obviously been industry-specific. Some demographics are simply more inclined to buy on a whim - women are more impulsive than men, for example - so businesses catering to this market will rely more impulse than rational thought. Also, more and more consumers are shopping online, and as weve explained above, this will require a whole new approach to marketing last-minute buys. At the end of the day it seems to come down to the age-old tenet of knowing your customers, and subsequently knowing how to trigger their impulses.

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