Preying on impulses

Marketers spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to encourage impulse buying. In a sense, trying to encourage impulse buying is a form of gravity fighting. You're trying to get people to do something that they didn't really want to do.

[See my earlier posts on the folly of gravity fighting.
http://adam-1001words.blogspot.com/2008/06/gravity-usually-wins.html

http://adam-1001words.blogspot.com/2008/12/innovation-rule-5-dont-fight-gravity.html]

But although I do believe that trying to fight gravity is generally a foolish strategy, it does not fail entirely. There are ways to get people to do what they don't really want to do. There's quite a bit of art and science behind this. Good retailers study this carefully. They know which products to put near the cash registers. They know what kind of signage will "interrupt" people. And so on.

I'm seeing a lot more of this sort of behavior on the part of businesses. The poor state of our economy puts pressure on businesses to sell sell sell. So I'm getting lots more emails with all sorts of sales incentives.

But let's play around a bit with the notion of impulse buying. I think it's safe to say that, in general, the impulse purchase is one that the consumer didn't need. If it was a need, it would have been on the shopping list. One way or another, people manage to buy their needs (assuming they can afford to do so). You don't have to encourage the need based purchase. You may need to make sure that it's your brand or product that is selected to fill the need, but you do not have to convince people to buy what they need.

Impulse purchases, on the other hand, are not needs. They are wants. And they aren't even really significant wants or they would have ended up on the shopping list. Rather, they tickle some small non-rational fancy buried somewhere in our minds that we probably cannot explain or justify.

Since people don't need these, I would argue that they are harmful. Why? Because they consume resources for no good reason. People are spending money that they could have used for a need or a truly significant want, on something that will do almost no good for them. In more flush times, this may not be so bad. But now that consumers are genuinely strapped and many are out of work, can we morally defend business practices that encourage impulse buying?

I wonder whether devising marketing strategies to get people to impulsively buy more gum, DVDs, options for their new car, etc. is on firmer moral ground than prostitutes trying to drum up business by finding married men they know are sexually unsatisfied. (Assume for the moment that prostitution was legal.) Or the alcohol industry trying to sell to recovering alcoholics. Or the mortgage industry trying to sell homes to people who couldn't afford them. Oh wait, they actually did that. My point is that all of these situations involve impulses. The sexually unsatisfied man has impulses. The recovering alcoholic has impulses. And shoppers have impulses.

When you spend time developing strategies and tactics to get people to add a few more items - that they don't really need or want - to their shopping cart, how are you better than the prostitute, booze pusher or predatory lender? Because you just sold a pack of gum and it doesn't cost that much or really hurt anyone? OK, you have a point. But not a very strong point. I'll agree that there is a quantitative difference between "taking" someone for $1 and conning someone out of thousands or wrecking their marriage... But it's just a quantitative difference. The fundamental behavior is the same. You have used guile to get people to do something that is bad for them and good for you.

On one hand, I say "shame on you!" On the other hand, our economy is entirely dependent on this. Maybe it's shame on us all.

Seem my earlier post regarding excessive consumption and Tim Jackson's poignant comments on the issue.