Spending Through Sadness
A recent study out of the J. F. Kennedy School for Government at Harvard has found that even momentary sadness causes consumers to increase spending.
We know, as persuaders, that consumers buy based on their emotions and gut instincts. Part of how we access these emotions is through criteria elicitation and appealing to their core values. The Harvard study, entitled, “Misery is Not Miserly: Sad and Self-Focused Individuals Spend More” will be published in ‘Psychological Science’ in June 2008. The study shows that people spend more when they are in sad or inwardly focused states of mind as opposed to people in neutral states of mind.
When we as persuaders use anchoring and peak emotional states to sell, we are utilizing a feeling of self focus (and on occasion, sadness, especially in the case of people with an ‘away from’ orientation.)
The study was conducted by inciting a heightened self focus in combination with the participants of the study being shown either a sad video clip or a neutral video clip advertising the product in question. The ones who viewed the sad clip offered 300% more than the neutral participants.
I suspect that if the folks doing the study also had a very happy, positive video clip of the product, that too would have incited increased spending. And had the researchers been aware of the towards and away continuum, they would have been able to further understand the benefits of peak emotional states in sales.
The towards and away continuum is powerful in determining how your prospect responds in specific contexts. Not everyone views the world through rose colored glasses. There are people who will respond positively to a negative associations.
Take the case of financial advisers, for example. Once you determine whether your prospect is towards or away, you can tailor the language you use to their particular orientation. After eliciting the prospect’s criteria, and finding that it is financial security, it is just one more step to finding out their orientation. Asking the question, ‘What will having financial security do for you?’ will give you the direction.
If they say, ‘Well, I’m tired of worrying about my finances. . .’ That’s an away from. If they say, ‘Well, I just want to stay in control of my finances. . .’ That’s more of a toward orientation.
With the away from person, you don’t want to be optimistic, just as with the toward person, you don’t want to be pessimistic. Tailoring your language in such a way that you bring more “pain” to the away person and more “ease” to the toward is really the key to selling.
The Harvard study didn’t get it wrong, but they really only got part of the story.
