Good day, site readers! How often do you come home and find a lot of unnecessary items in your bag? Maybe you are surprised that money goes nowhere? And most importantly — you can not understand what kind of hypnosis you succumb to in stores. This is due to the use of triggers by marketers. To increase the level of control and awareness, familiarize yourself with the concept of a trigger in more detail — and then you will be able to avoid manipulation in most cases.
Where do triggers come from?
Trigger in psychology are automatic responses that occur in response to an external stimulus. Different words, smells, atmosphere — all this actualizes different feelings in a person, and then, thanks to them, automatic behavior works.
The emergence of automatic reactions is due to evolutionary mechanisms. In some situations, defensive behavior is formed, in others — aggressive, which allows you to reduce the time allotted for making a decision and not miss the opportunity.
Triggers can be divided into types according to the situations of their formation. Accordingly, they will have different implementation. There are the following triggers:
- Common to most people and including basic typical emotional reactions. These include: fear of loss (then an instant purchase becomes justified) or greed (all promotional offers work for this trigger), or the desire to get “happiness” (advertising slogans promise a luxurious life when buying a new swimsuit, a cup of coffee, etc.).
- Individualformed in a person under the influence of unique situations. It can be a melody that plunges into panic, if it was she who was playing at the time of the accident, or the scent of perfume that was used during the time of falling in love, and now they are returning to a romantic state.
The life of every person is filled with such automatic, consciously uncontrolled reactions. You can use this feature of the psyche in completely different contexts, but triggers do not always work for good.
Interesting features of triggers
From the definition it is clear that triggers provoke people to take automatic actions, which is why marketers successfully use them to increase sales. The point is to impose on a person the need to buy, bypassing his conscious needs, using external stimuli that trigger certain emotions. Not the stimuli themselves, but only changes in the emotional background of a person make him act in a certain way.
The creation of marketing ploys is built mainly on the emotions of greed, pleasure and the pursuit of happiness. The main facts used in building a marketing program:
- Creation of artificial promotions, discounts and other offers that imply savings. Built on the use of a subconscious desire to benefit without effort, to feel a little more cunning and prudent. In fact, real stocks are quite rare, but this method does not stop working. Even those people who constantly monitor product price changes and understand that there are no discounts are more likely to buy the product advertised on the promotion.
- Brightness in advertising, on a showcase, presentation, packaging and other elements available for familiarization with the product. Brightness primarily concerns colors — the richer and brighter the palette used, the higher the likelihood of attracting attention. In addition to flowers, smells are used to flavor the room (in grocery stores they can specially distribute the aroma of coffee that enhances appetite, and perfume boutiques install special sprayers outside the showcase). These methods are based on a simple biological reaction — a person first of all notices what is brighter, larger, more fragrant. Correcting your behavior when using these triggers is the hardest thing.
- Approval and certification marks satisfy the need for safety. New brands gain trust faster if they have been approved by some kind of commission (dermatological or medical), have been recommended by nutritionists or famous personalities. In most cases, all recommendations are issued by the actors, and obtaining the approval of various institutions is only a formality. If the data is checked, the facts will come up proving that the necessary studies have not been carried out or the responsibility of the recommending institution has not been carried out.
- Features of thinking in the perception of numbers are used on a regular basis everywhere. The first digit has the greatest significance for perception, and the subsequent ones are usually ignored. That is why there are so many price tags ending in 9 — it gives the opportunity to create the illusion of a lower cost while maintaining the price.
- Another trigger is when reading product promises, where the brain doesn’t pick up the connecting particles. So, “effect up to 4 weeks” causes a feeling of a month duration from the procedure, but in fact 1 day is also up to 4 weeks. The same is true with the promise of discounts up to 90% — they can include both 5% and 10%.
- A wide variety of goods of the middle price segment gives a feeling of well-being, the possibility of choice, the manifestation of one’s economic abilities. In a situation where a person is faced with a choice between an expensive and a cheap product, a rather difficult internal struggle begins, associated with the desire to save money and purchase a quality product. The presence of an average price allows you to ease the internal tension associated with this choice. In addition, a wide variety of things in this particular price category creates a feeling of control and independent choice. This feeling comes from different names and packages, but if you read the fine print, it may turn out that all 50 items are produced in one place.
Conclusion
Of course, not all of our purchases are motivated solely by necessity. There are things bought for pleasure or pampering, but there are also situations of imposing purchases. You can avoid some of the tricks of marketers and sellers by understanding the mechanisms of triggers and taking into account the basic, frequently used tricks.
Be careful when viewing ads and try to include logic, and not succumb to massive emotional outbursts.
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Also, we recommend reading an article about the “déjà vu effect”. From this article you will understand the mechanism of this phenomenon.