Non-standard ways to increase sales in the online store

As always, I have a non-standard approach to solving such situations, so I went from afar and yesterday I began to read a rather interesting book on practical psychology, the author of which is Cialdini R. The book is called “Psychology of Influence”.

Despite the fact that this book is devoted to the application of knowledge about the psychology of people's behavior in society, a lot of moments in it reflect the relationship between the seller and the buyer. Albeit in a somewhat unusual form.

Already on the first pages, my attention was attracted by an article in which examples of successful and effective management of customers and their consumer behavior are given, albeit in a slightly non-standard way. The book is addictive, so I have not forgotten yet, I am telling in more detail. To understand the essence of the post, first I propose to read two small stories from the author.

№1
My neighbor, a jeweler, the owner of a store of antique jewelry and jewelry, once told me how he was personally convinced that there was a “dear = good” stereotype. One friend was looking for a wedding gift for his bride. The jeweler just had a beautiful necklace worth $ 500, which he was ready to give to his friend for $ 250. Once
a friend saw the necklace, he was delighted and wished to purchase it. But when he found out that a necklace costs $ 250, he immediately became sad and began to refuse confusedly, explaining that he was looking for “something really worthwhile” for his bride.
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The next day, the jeweler finally realized what was happening. He called a friend and said that a new necklace had been brought to the store, similar to the old one, but much better. This time, he set the previous price - $ 500. A friend came, saw the necklace and found its price acceptable. He was about to pay for the purchase when the jeweler told him that he was reducing the price by half as
wedding gift. A friend could not find words for joy. He bought a necklace for $ 250 and felt not disappointed or offended, but happy.

№2
Once a girlfriend called me who recently opened an Indian jewelry store in Arizona. She was dizzy with curious news. Something amazing had just happened in her life, and she thought that I, as a psychologist, could explain a lot to her. It was about a batch of jewelry from turquoise, with the sale of which she had difficulties. There was a peak tourist season, the store was constantly full of customers, products made of turquoise were of good quality for the price she was asking for; However, for some reason these products bought up badly. My girlfriend tried a couple of standard trading tricks to correct the situation. She tried to attract attention to the products described by moving the window with them closer to the center of the store - unsuccessfully. Then she told the salespeople that they should “push” these items hard - again without success.
Finally, in the evening before leaving for business out of town, my girlfriend in a hurry scrawled to her main saleswoman an angry note: “x 1/2 price for the whole turquoise”, hoping to just get rid of objects that are already disgusting, even at the cost of loss. When she returned a few days later, she was not surprised when she discovered that all the products from turquoise were sold. However, she was amazed to learn that because her employee, instead of “1/2,” read “2,” the whole lot was sold twice as expensive!

The author proposes to disassemble the psychological behavior of buyers in these situations. Pay attention to the fact that in both stories the buyer, who wants to purchase a good product, ignored cheaper offers. It seems to be clear and understandable - cheaper, it means more profitable. Why did the opposite happen? Reasoning logically, it can be assumed that the stereotype “expensive = good” also has a downside: “cheap = bad”. By the way, in English, the adjective cheap (cheap) matters not only “inexpensive”, but also “inferior”, “poor quality”.

Let's think about the strange behavior of those jewelry buyers who came down on a batch of turquoise items only after they were mistakenly offered at a price twice as high as the original.

In our case, buyers, mostly well-off vacationers and vacationers, poorly versed in turquoise, were guided by the standard principle and stereotype: “expensive = good”. Numerous studies show that people who are not sure about the high quality of a product often use this stereotype. Buyers who needed “good” jewelry, the more expensive products from turquoise seemed more valuable and desirable. Thus, the price has become a feature that plays the role of a trigger when determining the quality of a product; Only one eye-catching price increase led to a sharp increase in sales to high-quality product-hungry customers.

A classic example in this situation is the phenomenon of the Chivas Scotch Whiskey trademark. Sales of this whiskey rose sharply after the price was set for this product, significantly higher than the prices of competing brands. It is characteristic that the product itself has not changed at all. The same no less vivid example - Hennesy and Otard. By taste and food composition, these alcoholic beverages are in the same product category. Competent advertising, targeting wealthy customers and, most importantly, cost, and based on it, the final price, bring these products to the category of premium goods, which increases the consumer demand of potential buyers.

Let's return to our customers. Looking more closely at the situation, you can give it an objective explanation. Buyers were people who were raised on the “You get what you pay for” rule and who saw that this rule was confirmed in their lives more than once. Soon they modified this rule in the statement "expensive = good." The “expensive = good” stereotype worked quite effectively for them in the past, since normally the market price of a product increases as its value increases; higher price, as a rule, corresponds to higher quality. Therefore, it is not surprising that, without having special knowledge in jewelry, buyers determined the value of jewelry by their value.

Buyers of turquoise, without even realizing it, relied on stereotypical thinking. Instead of thinking carefully and spending time on identifying signs that could show the true value of a commodity from turquoise, they went the shortest way and focused their attention on its price, as the only quality criterion of this commodity. Buyers made a bet that the price adequately corresponds to the cost and quality of the product, and this information was enough for them to make a decision and push them to make a purchase.

This method of increasing sales can rightly be called non-standard and the opposite of the traditional lowering of prices and holding all sorts of promotions and sales. I draw your attention to the specifics of the application of this method for online stores. Do not forget to take into account that this method is not suitable for all categories of goods sold. For example, this method in the online store will be difficult to sell a refrigerator or cell phone. The prices for these products are set by the producers themselves and it will be senseless and stupid to change them to a higher one. On Hand-made, jewelry, products of folk art and other "exclusive" products, I think we can successfully break in this way of increasing sales. Prices for these products are completely in your hands, little is known about them, and I think it will not be difficult for you to come up with a qualitative description and history of the creation of such products.

This material will be useful for owners of online stores, because The psychology of consumer behavior in an online store is about the same as consumer behavior in real stores.

What do you think about this?