Marketing Psychology and Consumer Behaviour
How many times have you been left confused while ordering from Amazon or Flipkart?
How much time do you spend on average reading the review/ratings of webseries on Netflix before picking up one?
More options make it even harder for consumer to take a decision, in terms of marketing this is called as Analysis Paralysis Principle also known as Consumer Hyperchoice.
Analysis Paralysis (or paralysis by analysis) describes an individual or group process when overanalyzing or overthinking a situation can cause forward motion or decision-making to become “paralyzed”, meaning that no solution or course of action is decided upon.
To trigger a Consumer to take action, emphasize the difference their action will make. For example, instead of just saying ‘buy now’, we can say ‘buy now and improve your health today.’, which would compel our health conscious potential customers to buy the product.
Well all these compelling options comes with a cost, as whenever we choose an option, we do give up something or the other whether be it our time and energy or simply our personal data, which is of invaluable for the biggies.
What is it about options that is so difficult for us? Why do we feel compelled to keep as many doors open as possible, even at great expense?
The basic reason for our desire to keep all the options open, is the Human’s irrational fear of loosing, that’s why we always try to have a backup, if things don’t work out, whether be it career choices, home furniture, car tire or a mere bar of soap.
A social experiment, performed on a group of college students, held our assumption of people sort to have as many options as possible but the most striking was the revelation that we chase even the opportunities that are nearly dead, who’s success or failure would be of tiniest interest to us, eg many times we buy something on sale not because we really need it but because by the end of the sale all of those items would be gone, and we could never have it at that price again.
Next question we need to ask ourselves, are we really keeping all our doors open, and that too at what expense?
Running from one door to another just to keep all the doors opens, even the insignificant ones, will drain not only our wallets but also our physical and mental strengths. So the trick is too narrow down our options and stay focused.
We need to analyze the time, energy and resources spent in making a decision to make a choice, may at time be more than actual worth of the choice made, eg a man spends three months on deciding which camera to buy, but in term imagine the moments that he lost, which he could easily capture if he had one and also the actual expenses he paid for each photo in these three months. Well it was surely more than than the price of the camera itself.
Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, Flipkart’s big Billion Day, Myntra’s Season Sale and Xiaomi’s and OnePlus Flash Sale are the marketing Strategies built on the same lines, they have so many products that people are confused which one to choose and the discounts allure the gullible customers to buy tons of things and spend thousands from wallets and wait for weeks with their carts filled to get the ideal discounted rates.
Coca Cola and Pepsi also give us consumers a hard time, when it comes to choose from one of them
So next time when you have to make a decision do consider the time and energy you are putting forth, is it all worth for the damn Cola!!
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 