POWER OVER HABIT | personal development ||
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and more frequently.
This phenomenon is extraordinarily important to
marketers. Mineo explains that when consumers dis-
cover a brand, they need to begin to see it every-
where—as she says, they need to be “nurtured” with
further exposure in the form of targeted emails and on-
line ads in addition to encouraging them to spend time
browsing the pages of the Web site.
Verbatim effect
A study done by a group of scholars in Canada ex-
plored the question of why we tend to remember the
essence of what is said but not the exact words, a quirk
of the hippocampus that they called the verbatim effect.
Mineo points out that we are not so much reading online
these days as skimming, which presents marketers with
the problem of how to convey content; that’s why they
like succinct, gaudy headings. Mineo suggests honing
headings to draw maximum attention while describing
the product accurately, making them searchable and
sharable to encourage viewers to explore the site fur-
ther, and memorable so consumers will remember the
key search words that bring the page up again, ideally
at the top of the search results.
Clustering
When we’re getting ready to go on vacation, we tend
to set out in groups the things we want to pack: clothes
in one heap, footwear in another, swimming gear, toi-
letries, electronics… That’s because our short-term
memory is limited to just a few bits of information at one
time. It’s easier to remember to bring each item if it’s
clustered with other items of the same type; a general
category acts as a mnemonic device for the associated
items.
Marketers try to cluster content just as we group the
stuff we’re packing for that trip, or as we list items under
bullet points or use larger or different fonts to mark
headings and subcategories, making it easier to read
and remember clusters of analogous topics
Loss aversion
Mineo reminds us of the truism that we don’t like to
part with the things we acquire. She describes a study
conducted by Daniel Kahneman in which most of the
subjects who had been given a mug—a keepable—
chose to keep it rather than trade it for chocolate—an
edible—when offered the chance, and those who had
been given nothing chose the mug over the chocolate
when given the choice.
Marketers successfully exploit this possessive in-
stinct. For example, an IT company may offer a free ver-
sion of its software with a premium feature available for
a limited time. After the trial period runs out, the users
lose th e premium feature unless they upgrade—and
pay. There’s a risk involved, but many customers will be-
come accustomed to having the premium software and
will be averse to losing it.
Victims of the consumption epidemic have been in-
fected with goals and values instilled by advertising and
a society of excess. They live by the slogan “More is bet-
ter”; pressured by advertising, they feel the need to earn
more to buy still more. They don’t seem to know any-
more how much is enough. Only by understanding the
difference between sufficiency and surfeit and honestly
examining their own behavior can they establish appro-
priate limits for themselves and recover from the dis-
ease of over-consumption; only then can they be
masters of their lives once again.
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