Can Unconscious Marketing Influence
Go Too Far?

At the moment I'm doing interviews with the media about my book, Consumer.ology; there is quite a lot of concern about the extent to which consumers are open to manipulation as a result of retailers understanding consumer psychology better.

My view is that optimising the retail environment is a sensible thing to do. Customers would expect a shop to make its window display look attractive - without necessarily understanding how that might be priming their experience - why not have it smell 'right' and sound 'right' too?

Nevertheless, I do accept that the unscrupulous retailer can take advantage of other aspects of consumer psychology (and yes, these are explained in Consumer.ology). In particular, by exploiting heuristics (rules of thumb), it is very easy to influence someone to feel differently about a product than they otherwise would.

My view on under-taking this sort of marketing activity is that it is foolish. Yes, you might get a short term win, but the damage that will be done when your underhand tactics are exposed will make your brand seem a risky proposition.

The unconscious mind is phenomenally sensitive to potential risk, so the chances are it's going to come back to haunt you.

A recent study shows that what I had deduced is true.

Researchers used different techniques to influence the quality perceptions of a number of every day products (juice, shirts and paper towels), such as priming expectations with quality or price associations.

However, they didn't just want to show that these associations influenced choice, they wanted to see how subsequent selection was affected when the participants had experienced the disappointment of the product not living up to its expectations.

They found that, not only did people adapt their choice, the power of the association that had worked to attract them to the product initially, worked equally powerfully in helping them remember that the product was bad.

Marketers have talked for years about the importance of making all the elements of a proposition consistent. This study reinforces that message.

Associations are powerful things. They can make a big difference to how someone reacts to a product, even without them realising that they have. But, as this study shows, when the product doesn't deliver, associations can also help build negative memories that are a significant barrier to future sales.

Source: Wouter Vanhouche and Stijn van Osselaer.The Accuracy-Enhancing Effect of Biasing Cues. Journal of Consumer Research, 2009; 090114120157031