[Kwerks - #12] People get angry when they miss your offers
No, they don't always feel disappointed.
Join the community of empathetic marketers, for 2 min tips based on behavioral science concepts.
Metrics Impacted: Customer Satisfaction| Repeated Customers
Type: B2C
Previous tip: How Zomato uses pro accounts to boost sales (All tips here)
Problem:
You're seeing a drop in new customers after a discount or limited orders campaign.
Recommendation:
Don't play the hard-to-get game with your customers.
Effects:
When people cannot buy from a brand with limited stocks, they are most likely to switch to another brand. And those who miss out will get angry.
You know what an angry customer does, right?
Fact from a study: Shoppers on Amazon Prime Day who couldn’t buy an item because it wasn’t in stock reported they were 63% angrier and bought it elsewhere in 68% of cases. In comparison, only 32% bought it from another brand if scarcity wasn’t the reason (e.g. the price wasn’t what they expected)
Why it works?
Consider a retail dress shop that has a put up a “50% off” offer for a piece of dress you’ve always wanted to buy. But due to some reasons, you weren't able to buy it. You missed out on that great offer!
Now a few days have passed and the dress is back to the original price. Will you go and buy it at this new price?
Most people won't, because our [1] counterfactually thinking brain, will always go back to the discounted price. That discounted price will now be set as the anchor price. So why waste our money once we realize that the dress is now worth much less.
These appeals of scarcity trigger emotions. So when we're not able to buy the dress we really wanted, either we react with anger or see the competitors in a better light.
Points to note while implementing offers:
The discount strategy should not affect the perception of the value of the product in the long term (unless it’s a stock clearance sale).
Allow your consumers to grab the offer at a later stage. You can give them the chance to perform a few extra steps to get the offer - the risk of not allowing them is very high.
Change the products periodically to avoid product or feature comparison.
Always recommend alternatives even if they miss the offer.
[1] - Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what happened.