Credit: Brightside.me
Why do we always feel like we bought more than we planned to buy? We go into a store to buy one or two items and we end up buying five. I always try to reduce my shopping trips to a minimum so that I don’t spend too much money. If I go shopping more than once a week I spend at least 150% of my budget for that week. Apparently, there is a reason for that. I am falling for the tricks of marketing experts!
In this article, there are 11 hacks marketing experts use to make you buy more, or buy more expensive items. Hopefully, after reading this article and learning their tricks we will be able to resist psychological tricks they play on our minds. Read more and let us know if you think this article was helpful on our Facebook page!
The modern youth will buy regular cakes and photograph them for Instagram? No. However, if you slightly change the recipe, modernize its appearance, and transform it into fancy muffins or cupcakes, the humble cake will gain a new breath of life.
See how restaurants compose their menus:
Use of family images. Family and childhood associations evoke good memories. When we order “grandma’s soup,” we assume it will transport us back to our childhood.
Vivid food descriptions. How can one resist reading about “freshly baked bread with a crispy crust”?
Placement. The top part of the menu is where we look first, so restaurants put the most delicious – and most expensive – dishes there.
Warm colors. Such shades stimulate the appetite.
Tricks for prices. People have trouble parting with their money, so restaurants often don’t include the currency symbol.
If customers perceive a certain product as too expensive and avoid it, experts add a similar product with a higher price, making the initial one appear cheaper.
Creating a myth that surrounds a product, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, is another clever move. Milky Way, for example, ran a television advertisement in the early ’90s showing the bar floating in a glass of milk.
Merchants know that we are often too lazy to open the plastic package and take just one bottle. They also know that many people would consider it a good idea to take the whole package for future use.
We tend to associate a red label with reduced cost, even though it’s not always the case.
A large shopping cart. It’s a well-known trick to make us buy more things than we actually need.
Left-to-right movement. Many stores are arranged in a way that directs customers to move from left to right. We always turn left, and more often than not, we see the center of the wall on the right, where merchants place expired or more expensive goods.
Small tiles on the floor. Shopping carts make much more noise on them, so we slow down to avoid it. This makes us spend more time in the store, taking a closer look at the offers and possibly buying more.
Have you ever wondered why people in chewing gum commercials always take two pieces at a time? It’s a trick that makes you think it’s the right way to consume them. Meanwhile, you end up using twice as many pieces in the same time period, and the manufacturers sell more. The same applies to certain medicines and vitamins.
In 1957, Henckels produced a batch of potato peelers that were so good people bought one for a lifetime, resulting in low sales. Then someone came up with the idea of painting the handles of the utensils the color of potato peels. People started accidentally throwing away the peelers along with the peels, and sales increased again.
Manufacturers always try to add some “weight” to their products. For example, they inform you that there is an exotic floral scent or claim that this shampoo is recommended by every stylist in Paris.
It appears that goods for women and girls cost about 7% more than similar products for men and boys, despite the only difference being the color. This phenomenon is called the “pink tax” and is attributed to the belief that women are better customers.
Marketing experts often manipulate the terms written in product descriptions for food items. For example, Pringles chips are not actually potato chips, as they contain only 42% potato content, which also explains their unnaturally perfect shape. The same applies to cheeses, especially individually packaged slices: the content of real cheese is less than 51%, so producers have to label them as “cheese products”.
