How Stores Trick You Into Spending More
What a lot of people don’t realize is that there is a lot of research and planning to get you to spend more when you walk into a store. Lee Eisenberg,the author of “Shoptimism” says that the retail outlets are experts at playing on your emotions, your perceptions and your lack of critical reasoning.
What may surprise you is that it is often little things that you would never think would influence you that actually do. For example, studies have shown that simply adding the word “only” or “just” before the price of an item rather than the price only will get people to buy more. Or that “10 items for $10″ will get people to buy a lot more of the item rather than listing the price as $1 each even though they are exactly the same.
Stores also like to play the game of “good, better, best” with the merchandise in there store knowing that consumers that see similar items for a high price and a low price will most often go for the middle priced good. They also use the “halo effect” where the place a high priced item with a lot of lower cost related items around it to sell those lower priced items.
The best way to avoid falling for these tricks is to know that they exist and to be able to realize when the store is trying to manipulate you into purchasing something that you don’t really need.
Looking for tricks in the store is a favorite thing of mine!
John DeFlumeri Jr