Jul 21 2009
Marketing Psychology
Skepticism is, among other things, a useful shield against manipulative sales techniques. Consumer protection is certainly part of our mission statement, and not just by exposing pseudoscientific products but also mechanisms of deception.
I remember taking a social psychology course in college that covered the psychology of salesmanship, and soon after getting a first hand experience. The family of a friend, knowing I was interested in science and education, asked for my help in evaluating a product. The traveling salesman was in their living room and they wanted me to pop over and help them assess what he was selling.
The 20-something man was indeed sitting in their living, one leg in a removable cast. Apparently he had just suffered some injury, and had to hobble around on crutches to make his living. He was selling an all-in-one textbook designed to help students through highschool. He sat on one side of the room with the family across from him. As he showed the features of the large tome he would also follow up with a question, such as, “Do you think that would be helpful?” He also made a point of telling us all the people in the neighborhood who had purchased the book.
Armed with my recent study of such techniques I pulled aside my friend and their father and told them what was going on. This guy is using every cheap trick in the book – gathering sympathy, using peer pressure, and trying to get them to agree that the product is useful so they would seem inconsistent if they then declined to purchase it. I speculated that the cast was for show only. Further, the product itself was all but useless. Costing over a hundred dollars, it would likely sit on their shelf collecting dust, never to be cracked open.
After I explained all of this to the family they still decided to buy the worthless book. The psychological manipulation was just too great – they could not send the salesman away without a purchase after he spent so much time in their living room.
Since then the science of manipulation has only become more sophisticated. Companies are now armed with statistics and psychological experiments to optimize their sales. Most people are surprised to learn how easy we are to manipulate and feel that other people can be manipulated, but not them. We all think we are the exception.
Much of the manipulation derives from the fact that we are intensely social animals. We need to fit in, and to feel a connection to others and the community. That is why we are susceptible to peer pressure, and fear seeming inconsistent to others. Recent studies also show that the feeling of connection can be exploited to make sales. In one study subjects who were told they shared a birthday with the salesperson were more likely to by a product and be happy with their purchase. In another study subjects who were told they shared a birthplace with their dentist rated the experience more favorably.
It seems that just the coincidence of a common connection makes us feel good, and we are more likely to buy. Keep that in mind the next time a sales person chats you up and just happens to share something in common with you.
Other recent research suggests that we judge unfamiliar products by the company they keep – what other products they are surrounded by. This is partly why company reps obsess about where their products are placed on shelves. They want visibility, but now also they will want a familiar context – place their cheap and new product among more expensive brands.
These are just a few examples, and unless one is an expert or makes and extended study of this subject you can’t know all the ways in which we can be manipulated. But it is helpful just to know that we can be manipulated and that anyone trying to sell us something is probably trying to do so in one or more ways. But you can protect yourself just by engaging your skepticism whenever confronted with a sales pitch. Be wary of your emotions, social fears, and assumptions. Try to rely on objective information about the product – evaluate it as if it were an extraordinary claim.
But it does also help to learn the most common tricks of the trade. A savvy consumer is skeptical and knowledgeable.
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19 Responses to “Marketing Psychology”
In response to your SGU panel question on engaging 15 year olds with skepticism. I think offering secret knowledge in how to be smarter than the seller would make an excellent opening. Saying you are a skeptic still has the negative connotations, but tell people you expose cons and know how magic tricks are done and suddenly it doesn’t sound so bad.
Thought provoking post. I tried googling the top ten salesmen tricks, ploys, how to avoid them, marketing ploys, ect and I could not find a good source that lists a number of them. There are a ton of car salemen tricks but I want it to be more generalized. the best I could find was:
http://www.trampolinesales.com/ripoffs.htm
It seems that there are so many tricks salesmen use but I couldn’t find a good website listing a bunch of them together. do you have any link where I can learn the most common tricks of the trade?
I remember once sitting in the local KFC while a supposedly deaf person tried to sell pens for a dollar each. It struck me as a bit too anvilicious, since being deaf doesn’t make a person a complete invalid to the point they have to essentially beg like that. About a year later, a Family Guy episode had an aside where Peter was pretending to be deaf for a similar scam. Only he had little strips of stickers along with pens.
@Draal: It’d definitely be a good idea for someone to compile that sort of thing for easy reference. I minored in marketing, where, thankfully, they didn’t endorse anything sleazy, but there are a lot of tricks out there for making something allegedly more convenient. See also: (Re)Branding.
Funny too is how many want to buy a particular product, feel they probably shouldn’t because they can’t really afford it or some other reason, and very much appreciate the salesperson for justifying the purchase for them.
Hi,
there is a book that lists most of those principles and
“strategies”
“Covert persuasion.”
http://www.amazon.com/Covert-Persuasion-Psychological-Tactics-Tricks/dp/0470051418
Most are logical and obvious techniques that can also be used towards good causes. I try to use them (often very succesfully) in calming down excited patients (fi BPSD in dementia) without need for medical sedation or physical constraints. We also encounter this in management books: EPO principle: Emotion, Positive ..ordening for making contact, negociations etc
Knowing these techniques is of course a very usefull way to prevent becoming a victim of the “less ethical constrained Persuaders”.
PS Do not underestimate those simple techniques: they are very efficient even if people are rationally perceptively aware. If emotion and ratio collide, often the first still wins…:-). A belief is forged very quick and trying to rationalise people out of their beliefs is often very difficult..if not impossible
Sincerely
Dr. G. Otte
@Draal: Not exactly what you asked for, but Edmunds.com did a couple longish articles, “Confessions of a Car Salesman” at http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/article.html and “Confessions of an Auto Finance Manager” at http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/125308/article.html that expose many of the tricks auto dealerships use.
All our communication is manipulative, and all is dishonest to the extent that the strategies are covert. The problem is to know when you can trust the manipulator to consider the satisfaction of your interests to be his goal, rather than simply the satisfaction of moving his product. And his goal will always be a combination of the above.
In the end it always comes down to “trust, but verify.” Even if it was Ronald Reagan who gave that advice. Or maybe especially because it was Reagan.
http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-persuasive
There’s a nice 50-point list of how to get people to do your will. Fun research behind it, too.
Wow. Nice find, Celestial. I’ll probably end up using that link for blog fodder tonight, judging from the first few entries.
Well, I’ve found it a fairly interesting read myself; I’m a bit of a hypnosis/ persuasion/ manipulation/ suggestibility/ psychology nut on top of being a scientist, so a lot of stuff in there’s really cool.
There’s actually a fairly big snake-oil market out there in self-hypnosis, the cult of positive thinking, and NLP-peddlers, but in between the dredge of useless junk there’s a bit of insight that can still be had about the way people think, how it shows and how it can be influenced and controlled. As a professional poker player on the side, this kind of knowledge is pretty critical to my living. I’ll have to tell you about talking someone into handing me $300 with a silly face and moose-hands sometime.
Toss up a link to the post when and if you do write it, I’d love to read it!
The methodology that persists in celestial’s example seems to be that you feed people information under a pretext that it will be helpful in a non-manipulative context, and then introduce a problem to them in another context through which they can be expected to use the planted information to make a decision without realizing this was the use it had been intended for to begin with – and thus had no reason to distrust its authenticity.
Great post! That is all.
I recommend that anyone who wishes to learn the basic tenets of marketing psychology to actually complete a good sales marketing course, and try to do well at it.
Choose one that has supervised one-on-one testing of the acquired skills with a professional sales-person.
It tends to inoculate one against being ‘taken for a ride’.
When someone calls or shows up at my door I just say, “I never do business with anyone who comes to me.” This works equally well for magazine salesmen to Greenpeace. It’s amazing how quickly this shuts down the conversation. The most I will do is accept information to research later on the web, but I’ll never make a promise or a pledge.
I don’ think salesmanship counts so much when people are doing research on the web. There’s too much time to think and balance opposing sources.
@davew: You’re absolutely right.
This principle can be extended to the area of shopping for a car, also. If you will research your car purchase online, and arrange for financing through your bank, then you’re halfway there. Also, most dealerships now have an “Internet Sales” department – where you can contact them online, negotiate prices, arrange a test drive, etc., all without even having to come to the dealership to be subjected to the high-pressure tactics of the salesmen who are working the lot. Even better, by working with the internet sales departments, you can deal with multiple dealerships at a time, and figure out who truly has the best offer. This works for used cars as well as new, and it’s a terrific solution, in my opinion, to the problem of being on the lot, having the pressure of making a decision right then and there.
I sold cars for a couple of months, and you learn a lot of psychological tricks really quick. On top of that you learn how to lie/cheat the customer in as many ways as you can. i hated that job.
@davew: The trick is to have the willpower to say no. One of the more common of the very dishonest tricks sales drones use is to be passive/aggressively rude to you, to the point where the only way to shut them down is to be deliberately rude in return. A lot of people seem to have a pathological fear of confrontation, even when the other party is asking for it. A lot of people simply can’t say no to a salesman who pushes that hard.
As for buying cars, the most fun I ever had going in to debt was the last new car I bought. Just make a real commitment in your head that you are *not* going to buy today, and go shopping. And when they start to high pressure you, look them right in the eye and tell them “If you push me even one more time, I’m going to take my business somewhere else, and I’m going to make certain your manager – and every other customer here right now – knows why.” And mean it. The little weasels will dance for you, and put on a show, and in the end, give you a decent deal, because they are so driven to succeed by their managers that you can counter-manipulate them through it.
Regarding car sales, a great book on this is ‘Don’t Get Taken Every Time’ by Remar Sutton. It is a hilarious inside look at car sales, and has been revised 6 times since I 1st read it. He also has a web site by the same name.
Also a very good strategy when looking for some expensive purchase that you might not want to buy impulsively, is to take someone with you who is clear headed and not emotionally tied to the purchase, and can help you to walk away and not be pressured to “buy now”.
Well I’m in sales – I sell scientific equipment and I’d just like to counter the rather paranoid view that seems to be prevalent here. Fact is that sales guy has to feed his family too, if you don’t like his style tell his boss.
Many sales people now avoid the old school techniques that have given sales people a bad name and genuinely wish to help their customers. For anyone who dislikes being at the receiving end of shonky sales techniques, I recommend buy only from sales people who don’t use them – if everyone did this, the shonks would die out.