People often ask me what’s the single most powerful consumer behaviour trait they can leverage?
Of course, there isn’t just one aspect of consumer behaviour that will make the difference between success and failure. But there IS one aspect that is more powerful than all the others. Where a good piece of direct mail might produce a 3% rate of return, this can produce a 50% rate of return, or even higher.
To explain it,
I’ll refer to the best consumer behaviour
reference material money can’t buy…
children.
Children’s behaviour around products and marketing is exactly the same as adults’, just without the social window-dressing we all acquire through the years to avoid showing openly what we’re really feeling.
Have you noticed
that when a child really gets excited
about a new toy they behave in ways that
shout to the world around them that they think
it’s the best, most captivating thing in the
world, ever? With very young children
this ‘new item’ appeal can be focused on the
box or wrapping paper around the toy that you
paid so much for.
If you’ve seen
this happen when a child of a similar age is
present too, you may also have witnessed how
such an item can become the sole point of
attention; both of them want it and nothing
else will do. Even the same item in the
wrong colour can be deemed inferior to
whichever item got fussed over first.
Previously pleasant kids can turn positively
venomous over an apparently innocuous piece of
plastic, whose sole endearing quality appears
to be that one child has it in his or her
possession and is totally enamoured with
it.
Whilst this is
most easily observed when it happens with
children, it’s not something the rest of us
grow out of. Adults too are very quick to
be enthusiastic about products they’ve recently
acquired, and their enthusiasm can
understandably be interpreted by those around
them as an honest endorsement of the product,
and not one that is just driven by
novelty. This enthusiasm can be highly
infectious.
Has this been studied in social psychology? Turn the page to find out just how powerful this effect can be... »
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© 2008 Philip Graves Consumer Behaviour Resource. All rights reserved.