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This month’s Business Article:
Marketing to our Minds
By Leon Alexander, Ph.D.
More businesses, marketers, advertisers and retailers have gotten far craftier, savvier, and more sinister. Today, thanks to all the sophisticated technologies they have at their disposal and the new research in the fields of consumer behavior, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, companies know much more about what makes us tick.
My previous article, "How Customers Think," (published in the November 2010 edition of LNE & Spa, American Edition, pg. 87) explained how guests think when they visit salons. This article focuses on how marketers use that knowledge to get guests to buy their products or services.
They scan our brains and uncover our deepest subconscious fears, dreams, vulnerabilities and desires. They mine the digital footprints we leave behind each time we swipe a loyalty card at the drugstore, charge something with a credit card or view a product online, and then they use the information to target us with offers tailored to our unique psychological profiles. They hijack information from our own computers, cell phones and even our Facebook profiles and run it through sophisticated algorithms to determine who we are and what we might buy.
Marketers know more than they ever have before about what inspires us, scares us, soothes us, seduces us, alleviates our guilt or makes us feel less alone and more loved and connected to the scattered human tribe. They know how to trigger feelings of nostalgia, confidence, security and spiritual fulfillment in us. And they know how to use all of this information to obscure the truth, manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.
At the time we are born, we may already be biologically programmed to favor the sounds and music we were exposed to in utero. Shrewd marketers have already begun cooking up strategies to capitalize on this.
Several years ago a major Asian shopping mall chain realized that because pregnant women spend a great deal of time shopping, the potential for "priming" these women was significant. Pregnancy, after all, is the most primal emotional period in a woman's life. Between the hormonal changes and the nervous anticipation of bringing another life into the world, it is also a time when women are most vulnerable to suggestion. So the shopping mall chain began experimenting with the subconscious power of smell and sounds. First, they began spraying Johnson & Johnson's baby powder in every area of the mall where clothing was sold. Then it infused the fragrance of cherry across areas of the mall where people could buy food or beverages. Then it started playing soothing music from the era that these women had been born in to evoke positive memories from their own childhoods.
Not only were sales boosted at the mall, a year later it had another far more unexpected result that surprised everyone. The chain began receiving letters from mothers attesting to the spellbinding effect the shopping center had on their newborns. It turns out that their babies calmed down whenever they entered the mall.
Counterintuitive though it sounds, there is a real biological basis behind our attraction to fear. Fear raises our adrenaline, creating that primal, instinctual fight or flight response. This in turn releases epinephrine, a hormone and neurotransmitter that produces, as many "adrenaline junkies" will attest to, a deeply satisfying sensation.
So how does a shopping addiction start? It all goes back to dopamine, that feel-good neurotransmitter our brain's limbic system spurts out to give us a "high" or "rush."
A habit is formed in the dream stage, which is then reinforced and permanently embedded in the routine stage. At that time, we are unconsciously longing for the dream stage feelings we left behind at the beach or at the spa.
Fear is a powerful emotion
Our brains are hardwired to fear potential threats. We come into the world knowing how to be afraid, because our brains have evolved to deal with nature.
Fear is far more powerful than reason. It evolved as a mechanism to protect us from life threatening situations. The fear centers are situated in the most "ancient" (evolutionarily) section of our brain, known as the reptilian brain, which goes back to when vertebrates were primarily in the oceans and more likely to survive if they had the neural capacities to evade the "bigger fish" sooner than their companions did.
When a threat is perceived, the body goes into automatic mode, redirecting blood to certain parts of the body and away from the brain. The respiratory response also decreases blood supply to the brain, literally making a person unable to think clearly. In other words, the loss of blood to a person's brain can make them stupid.
Most of us are scared about the economy, of losing our jobs or defaulting on our mortgages. We're scared that our spouse or partner might leave us. We're scared of loneliness and having no friends. We're scared of sexual inadequacy. Of getting cancer. Of getting old and breaking a hip. Of death. We're scared of driving and we're scared of flying. We're scared of terrorists and global warming. We're scared of the dark.
It's these seemingly infinite fears, some planted in our minds by marketers and advertisers, others merely amplified by them, that drive us to buy triple moisturizing cream, teeth whitening strips, multivitamins, gym memberships, organic food, bottled water and humidifiers.
Germophobia
When we buy a morning paper, we bypass the one directly on top of the stack. Instead we pull out the one directly underneath it. Why? Because we imagine that the second one hasn't been manhandled by fingertips with germs and is cleaner. When women visit the ladies room at a restaurant or store, only five percent enter the first stall. Why? Because they believe it is less clean than the second or third one.
The point is this: the illusion of cleanliness or freshness is a subtle but powerful persuader, and marketers know it. It is tied to our universal fear of germs, which ties into our innate fear of disease and illness.
Does any of this make us healthier? No, not really. But it does make us less afraid of getting sick.
It all goes back to dopamine
So how does a shopping addiction start? It all goes back to dopamine, that feel-good neurotransmitter that our brain's limbic system spurts out to give us a "high" or "rush" so pleasurable that we can't help but repeat the behavior as soon as dopamine levels drop back down to normal. The more we experience the object or behavior of our addiction, the greater our tolerance becomes, meaning we need more and more of the substance or behavior to experience that dopamine high again.
We have become addicted to our smartphones. When we receive a new e-mail or text, our brains release a shot of dopamine, and thus we learn to associate that pleasurable feeling with the act of checking our phones.
Hooked on brands
How do we get hooked on brands? It happens in two stages. The first is known as the routine stage. This is when we use certain brands or products as part of our daily habits or rituals. The second stage is known as the dream stage, where we buy things not because we need them, but because we allowed emotional signals about them to penetrate our brains. It's usually at a time when we have let our guard down, often over the weekend or while on a vacation. When the weekend arrives, we shed our routines like an unwanted skin, and we become more susceptible to the dream stage.
A habit is formed in the dream stage, which is then reinforced and permanently embedded in the routine stage. At that time, we are unconsciously longing for the dream stage feelings we left behind at the beach or the spa.
We all know a person that absolutely has to have her Starbucks in the morning before she can function. Not just any coffee—it has to be Starbucks. Or maybe you are that person.
We as consumers act in much the same way as birds and termites. We are wired with a collective consciousness, in that we assess what those around us are doing and modify our own actions and behaviors accordingly.
Humans flock like sheep and birds, subconsciously following a minority of individuals. It takes a mere five percent of informed individuals to influence the direction of the crowd. The other 95 percent of us trail along without even being aware of it.
The beauty industry has evolved in technique, design and business acumen. We will take a giant leap if we do what successful marketers outside our industry do before launching a new brand or service. They study the consumer and market to their emotions, needs and fears. If we emulate these proven practices, we will fulfill a consumer need, as well as create a seriously profitable retail business that complements our service business. Both fall under one umbrella, forming the ultimate consumer magnet.
Leon Alexander, Ph.D., is the founder and president of Eurisko, a comprehensive design, consulting and distribution source launched in 2006 to serve the salon and spa industry. He established Eurisko with the vision of designing salons and spas from the consumer's perspective. Dr. Alexander, a doctor of behavioral psychology, is an expert in both retail and salon development.
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