Marketing Psychology and Consumer Behaviour
How are we intrigued to buy those sweets and candies placed near the cashier?
Why would you try to decrease you spend on petrol station when you got yourself that exquisite pair of denims.
Why do we end up adding up the items from the suggestion list to our carts on Myntra and Amazon?
Why is the New Car Ad on the hoarding placed at the end of the bumpy road full of potholes?
Well is your mind playing tricks with you or are they just too many coincident? Well it is just, your subconscious mind activated in these similar situations, where it is influenced by all the external subconscious activities going around, which prompts conscious mind to react and take decisions in a given way. This act of influence of subconscious mind on the conscious mind is called Priming.
Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD.
Priming in marketing is a subconscious reaction to stimuli that influences our conscious decisions to new stimuli. Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.
Lets understand this through a public experiment. A group of people were asked to think about the terrible sin from their past, something they had done which was unethical. They were asked to describe their feelings after remembering all those memories. After this, half of the participants were offered the opportunity to wash their hands. Later all the participants were asked, if they were willing to participate in a research conducted by a passionate graduate student, just out of favour with no pay. Had you helped the student, out of favour with no returns?
Well it turned out, the ones who did not wash their hands agreed to help 74% of the time, but those who did wash agreed only 41% percent of the time. The researcher believes this difference is due to the reason that the people who washed their hands, after remembering their sins, subconsciously think of cleansing their guilt and thus now felt lesser urge of doing any favour, as compared to those who did not wash their, after remembering their guilt, as they still felt the inner pressure to wash of their sins by doing a favour in return.
How does Priming impact our Buying Decision?
Priming has become an important marketing tool these days, it includes all the pre-launch brand promotions and advertisements, which intercept the buyer/consumer before they come in contact with the actual product. The common relatable examples are the movie trailers which create the hype for new upcoming movies. The Print and Digital Ads for new product launches to create the product awareness is also a Priming tool.
OnePlus
OnePlus came up with this Priming marketing strategy, where back in 2014, before the launch of its first handset, OnePlus One, it started pre-registration forms on its website. This got people interested and all started registering for the new device and it made an such a demand for the handset that it was soon out of stock and people had to wait for weeks to get the new handset. This strategy was a remarkable success.
On similar lines OnePlus 5T, where it just declared the upcoming handset but didn’t reveal the new specs it will gearing in. this left people guessing about the new features, camera megapixels, screen size, the new chipset and ram size, design and much more. This move was again picked up by masses and became the talk of the tech town. This proved that OnePlus commanded one-up position true to its name, well played OnePlus!!
This same strategy was followed by Apple iPhones and Samsung and other players too, but the credit for the idea goes to OnePlus.
Mystery Shampoo: Pantene
Priming and mystery creation does not always work for all brands. The best example we have is P&G’s Pantene, in 2010 came up with a marketing campaign of Mystery Shampoo in India, while it already had a successful launch in America. It had Hoarding Ads placed all over with shampoo bottle with a question mark.
But unfortunately P&G’s rival, Unilever (HUL) had some tricks to play. HUL, put Hoarding Ads, just next to Pantene’s stating that, There is no Mystery, Dove is the No.1 Shampoo. This was a strategic move with turns the tide into Dove’s favour and all the hype, that Pantene, had created by signalling mystery, had turned into a farce for P&G.
Priming, is a commendable marketing tool but only when used with proper strategy in place. It can be positive or negative. If a shoe brand has a tagline like Comfort means so much more than Style, this will work negatively in the sense, at one instance brand is portraying the comfort level of its product but at the same time it is also indicating that it s products might not be that stylish, which will have an instant impact on buyers, as now when they are reminded of stylish footwear, they are bound to compare the brand’s product to other stylish footwear brands. This may cause people to switch to other brands, which promise comfort in style.
Well next time when you are out there, where you have to select a brand, out of say 10 brands, and you have a gut feeling about a brand, it’s not your gut it’s your Subconscious Mind playing the tricks with you!! Isn’t that Fascinating?
Marketing Psychology and Consumer Behaviour
Murtaza Choolawala
Geologist, Marketer
Hi, I am Murtaza, an enthusiastic researcher. Always curious to learn new things and to connect with people. Tech and Marketing are my obsession, and Research and Analysis are my Passion.
Marketing Psych 
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