How to Get Customers to Spend More: Make 'Em Cry

The Associated Press recently wrote about a multi-university study on how emotions affect the spending habits of consumers. The study essentially confirmed what many human behavior and retail experts had known for a long time: sad customers spend more.

Study participants who watched a sadness-inducing video clip offered to pay nearly four times as much money to buy a water bottle than a group that watched an emotionally neutral clip.

Most folks will agree that a bit of shopping can lift them out of the doldrums, but what this study illustrates is the commonly unknown impact of mood on spending. Interestingly enough, subjects in the study who were exposed to the sad video and offered to pay more for the water bottle were adamant that the video had no bearing on the price they were willing to pay.

“This is a phenomenon that occurs without awareness,” Jennifer Lerner, a Harvard professor who studies emotion and decision making, said in a phone interview. “This is really different from the idea of retail therapy, where people are feeling negative and want to cheer themselves up by shopping. People have no idea this is going on.”

This phenomenon can be looked at two ways. First, retailers can do what advertisers have been doing for years: take advantage of customers' low levels of contentment and appeal to their need to be happy. The other way is to understand how a customer is feeling when they buy, and work to make sure the sale is permanent. One major side effect of misery spending is the realization that purchases don't have a long-term curative effect. This often leads to buyer's remorse and returned products, and if you don't have an effective way to handle those returns, you'll soon find yourself feeling down. And you know what happens then.

Comments

[Paul Reynolds]

This is very true - and we can attest to it. We run a little retail children's book/toy shop called The Blue Bunny. We feature the books and prints of my twin brother Peter H. Reynolds - and many of the books have that effect.
Peter's book he illustrated called SOMEDAY, which hit the NYTimes #1 spot last year, is almost GUARANTEED to make people cry. It's a sweet little book about a mother's wish for her child to live to her full potential - though the joy and trials of life. The intimation that the mother in the story passes on, is the final tug of the heart. We've placed these books at the front of the story - along with tissues - and by the time they get to the register further back, they've loaded up with merchandise.

So . . perhaps we're all playing some kind of a healing role in addressing the struggles of the human condition.
With the right product selection, the "Retailer Store Owner" can also be "Re-Storers of the Human Spirit." We know that mission energizes us - and keep customers coming back and spreading the word. (We've been in business five years - even have out of state customers coming to us, and last year tripled our space!)

Great insights Doug and Matt - this is one of the few professional eNews/Blog resources I actually look forward to in the midst of e-overload! -- Paul

Paul - Thanks for sharing your own experience with this phenomenon. I think a lot of "experts" who lack the real-world experience of running a retail endeavor would read into this study's findings as merely another way big business can (and often does) manipulate an already economically challenged buying public. The fact that particular merchandise can serve as therapy (regardless of how much somebody's willing to spend for it) reinforces my common teaching that sales associates need to look beyond "the now" of the immediate transaction, and consider and visualize how a customer will be using and living with a product after it's been brought home.