Marketing Psychology and Consumer Behaviour
How many times have you compromised your inner gut feeling just to please your friend/colleague?
Do you feel anxious if you don’t get 100 likes on your new instagram post?
Have you bought an electronic accessory just to show how cool are you?
Well, if you been through any of the circumstances above, you have been captured by the same old monster twin of Society, called Social Proof.
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation. Social proof is considered prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation at hand.
The Social Proofing & Validation, have gained much importance in today’s modern tech and Social Media driven world. It comes with its own pros and cons.
Marketers have gained a much deeper understanding of these principles and become a larger part, in today’s new Marketing Era which is referred by Philip Kotler and Iwan Setiawan in their fourth edition, Marketing 4.0 Moving From Tradition to Digital.
The social media cult of Fashionistas, overwhelming the social media platforms with their stupendous hyper realistic lifestyles, have created a pool of young crusaders and outliers, all making efforts to incorporate the similar extravagant habitual lifestyle, feel the constant pressure of the Social Validation and Proofing. This on other hand grown to be much more advantageous for the Brands to slide in new products & services and reap its benefits.
This Social media boom has also stretched and forced the Brands to overcome the traditional Marketing Tactics and come up with new innovative original ideas, encompassing all 4P’s of Marketing Mix.
Let’s take an example of Apple iPods aka Walkman of the 21st Century, revolutionized the World of Music. The idea of having 10,000 songs in your pocket was overwhelming in its own self, and as musician John Mayer said, “People feel they are walking through musicology”. Apple, not only gave an excellent device to the market, but it also came up with one of the remarkable Silhouette Campaign, which soon became a fashion cult. The black shadows of mysterious personalities had one thing in common, and that was that they were all lost in the World Of Music, grooving with the iTunes. The whole campaign became the stepping stone for Apple to become the Tech Giant it is today. In the hindsight here the Social Proofing also played a major role in favour of Apple, as it targeted each and every music lover and broke the regional and cultural barriers and thus it created a need, a want for iPod in almost every single individual at that time. People felt the pressure and need to own it, and portray themselves as, iSmart!!
Other quite remarkable, one of the market leaders of its time, was the Blackberry Quirky/Qwerty Phones. These phones set a standard for the mobile phones in the market. This brand was fueled and collapsed both by the Social Proofing Principle, as once it was quite cool to chat on BBM, and later it was left in dust, cause then it was too old to use it against the new Androids and iOS apps. Still it was phenomenal, in its short lived success, Well They Were The Blackberry Boys.
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 