This article is a continuation of an earlier article link of the which is as below:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-fancy-gifts-prizes-lure-influence-our-purchase-rejo-francis/
In addition to gifts and fancy prizes that indulge us to take certain decisions there are several other strategies and techniques which are used to overcome the rational part of the brain and how the same requirement when presented differently leads to very different responses from all of us not only while purchasing products and services but also while giving away money and taking decisions based on requests.
Let’s start with a technique called
1a.”That’s not all” offers
This is a situation where we are offered multiple offers on the same product which could include price drops, free offers in additional to the price cuts and all this backed by some additional product to further sweeten the deal. These are aimed at sweetening the deal so much that even people who had no interest at all in purchasing the product also end up purchasing the same.
We get to see this kind of offers very often in huge multiproduct shops and malls with high footfall where the objective is to motivate maximum people who are totally non consumers to buy the product based on these multiple combination offers.
1b. “Added for free” offers
We see these offers coming up regularly in the FMCG and wellness space where there is another product of the company which gets added for free to sweeten up the offer. There was an interesting study where the sales increased by as much as 75% when cookies were added as free to a biscuit packet. If we consciously look back these keeps happening when we make purchasing decisions between brands were there is hardly any differentiation between the products and these offers sway our decision towards the product which has these kind of added for free offers.
2. “Pique” techniques
These are cases were our attention is captured by some requests which are normally not seen till then and based on this we become interested to test the product or try out these services. When the options of making hotel bookings and other products by just paying Rs 1 were offered for the first time it caught all of our fancy and we were tempted to try out the same. Similarly for a lot of other products when such offers where introduced there was a novelty around it which induced trial among otherwise non consumers.
3. “Disrupt and Reframe” techniques
This is a technique in which you momentarily surprise a person to shake them out of autopilot and then present a normal request. In one experiment to test the same people went door to door selling the same product for charity at a very nominal price. So, when people were offered something at a price of 300 paisa instead of Rs 3, though the actual price paid is the same the sales were double when the price was first offered in rupees and then a reframed offer given at the lowest denomination like paisa in this case.
4. “Foot in the Door” techniques
There are two widely quoted experiments done by Freedman and Fraser which is often used to explain this concept. The research team randomly called 150 women pretending to be from a consumer group and requesting if they could come over to their house to scan their cupboards for soaps and cleaning liquids etc. as part of a experiment that they were conducting. Only around 10% of the 150 women who were called agreed through the team tried to convince saying that it would only take a few hours etc.
The team then called another random set of 150 people and requested them if they could participate in a telephonic survey which was being done by a consumer group to understand various purchase decisions etc. Almost all 150 people did the survey. About 3 days later the same team called the 150 women again and requested for coming over to their house and scanning their cupboard as done with the first group. More than 50% of the women agreed for the same under this situation.
In the second experiment all the residents who stayed on the main road of the area were asked if they could place a big board showing Drive Slowly in their front gardens to alert the drivers to drive slowly. Though the objective of the boards were to keep the street safe none of the people who were approached agreed to do the same.
The researchers then approached a second set of residents on the same main road but this time requested for keeping for a much smaller board which was just three inches square and almost everyone who were approached agreed for the same. A few weeks later they returned and requested if they would mind if they replaced the small boards with the bigger boards to which 76% of the people agreed.
As we saw in the two experiments it was easier to convince people to try a new think when the same was of a smaller scale and once, they had tried the same it was easier to convince them to agree to something bigger.
5. “Door in your face” techniques
This is the opposite of the earlier technique where initially you request for something very big which would be turned down but after this when the request is made for something more reasonable it gets accepted easily. This technique is widely used in one-to-one negotiations.
All the above are techniques quoted above are techniques of persuasion and what’s even more interesting is that all these techniques can be easily learned and build into our daily routines.
To continue understanding more about such persuasion techniques and learning and incorporating them into our daily routines do subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter Rejo’s Biz Bytes and visit my website www.rejofrancis.com.
