LIVIN G & LE ARNING


was that a large proportion of the shoppers who tasted the 24 jams found it too hard to work out which jam they preferred and should therefore buy – so they walked off and bought nothing at all.


Shortcuts decide what you do more often than you might imagine. Experienced marketers know this, of course, and will try to build shortcuts into their offer and how it is presented.


This will encourage you to buy their


brand when your doing mind wants you to make a quick decision without having to think through all the alternative options. It should be obvious that none of


these shortcuts is likely to help you end up with the best possible choice – but that’s not what your doing mind is looking for. It is simply looking for a way to cut back on your thinking effort and, by doing so, to save energy. All it wants is for you to end up with a good enough option. Imagine you are in a restaurant that


offers a fixed price French dinner including wine. You are offered a glass of cabernet sauvignon that you are told is from North Dakota. You are not that taken by the wine and feel the food is also pretty average. You don’t even finish each course as it is served and you decide that you won’t return to that restaurant as you had, at best, an average evening. This is part of an experiment that was


staged in a restaurant in Illinois, USA. A group of diners was served a free glass of a cheap cabernet sauvignon with a fixed price French dinner. However, half were told the wine came from California and the other half that it came from North Dakota. The group that thought they were drinking a Californian wine not only rated the wine higher than the group drinking wine apparently from North Dakota, they also rated the food more highly. They ate 11 percent more food and were more likely to make a return reservation. Why did this happen?


30 JULY 2016


Because the diners associated California with sunny weather and great wine, they enjoyed the wine more, and, because they enjoyed the wine more, they were in a positive mood and expected to have a good dining experience; so that when the food arrived they really did enjoy it more. This in turn led them to eat more of the food and, after such an enjoyable experience, they naturally felt it would be worthwhile returning to this restaurant. In other words, the alleged origin of the wine largely defined their dining experience. Here is another example: You are in a


bottle shop wondering what you should buy – beer, wine, or spirits? Or maybe you should buy something non-alcoholic from another shop? As you wander down an aisle you hear the sound of a cork coming out of a bottle and wine being poured into a glass. You don’t think about it – in fact, you may not even be consciously aware of these sounds – but you reach for a bottle of wine and head for the checkout. Your doing


mind has made the decision for you by noting the wine-related sounds, relating these sounds to memories of good experiences you had drinking wine in the past, and therefore making the decision for you that you should buy wine. The fact that we typically don’t know


when we have been influenced by marketers contributes to the success of what they do to shape our purchase decisions. A UK supermarket placed four French


and four German wines, matched for wine style and price, on its shelves. A sound system on top of the shelving unit played French music on even days and German music on odd days. On French music days 77% of the wine purchased was French, and on the German days 73% of the wine purchased was German. Clearly, the music had an impact. Yet, when shoppers where asked if the music made a difference to their choice when checking out, the vast majority claimed they had not been influenced at all by the music, and some reported they hadn’t even been aware of any music playing. None of us is immune to this kind of


influence. No matter how well informed and astute a consumer we are, our hard-wired brain circuitry wants to take advantage of the shortcuts marketers use to get us to buy what they want us to, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it saves time and effort for the more important things our brain needs to do. What is important, though, is to be aware that this is what you are doing; so that you can put the time and energy into rational decision making when a purchase decision is worth the effort to you. n


Dr Peter Steidl is an author, marketing consultant and neuromarketing expert. In his articles and books he shares the insights he has gained


and explores new ways of understanding why we do what we do. His books include: Zombie Consumer. How marketers decide what you buy, Createspace 2016, and Find Your Happy Weight Without a Diet. The Neuroscience of Weight Loss, Createspace 2012.


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