Eat A Banana Before You Go Shopping!
How marketers abuse your ‘decision fatigue’ for impulse purchases
You stand at the register of the supermarket while the clerk scans in your purchases. As you stand there, the candy shelf gains your attention. That chocolate sure looks delicious!
You could do well with some sugar right now, walking through the isles and picking your groceries for the week was exhausting. The chocolate bars and sweets on the shelf at the register are yelling at you. “Buy us!”, “you deserve it!” and sure enough, you grab some snacks for the way home.
What just happened is that your brain got tricked into making an impulse purchase. This happens more often when you go grocery shopping in the afternoon or evening rather than in the morning, right after breakfast.
Decision fatigue occurs when we make more and more decisions
Your ability to make decisions and the lack thereof is one of the most valuable aspects to marketers and salesmen. If they get you at the right time, they can make you buy something you would otherwise not even consider.
Did you ever wonder why politicians seem to always walk around in the same clothes? It’s one less decision they have to make at the start of the day, reserving their energy for more important decisions.
We all have to make plenty of decisions every day. But the more decisions we make during the day, the more prone we are to “decision fatigue”, having negative effects on our ability to make the right decisions. This means that you will likely make worse decisions, the more decisions you had to make overall during the day.
This is a well-known fact and is heavily abused in the world of marketing. That’s the very reason you come across a shelf with sugary sweets next to every supermarket register in the world. You’ll have to make plenty of decisions until you get there. Do you take pork chop or ground beef? Do you take the Arabica coffee or the premium blend? Oh look, mayonnaise is reduced 20%, but you still got enough home. Should you buy it anyways?
By the time you reach the register, your brain wasted a lot of sugar on calling the shots. You might even feel hungry. And your ability to make good decisions is already impaired. Staring at the chocolate for a few seconds might be enough to make you buy a bar. If it’s not chocolate, then it may be a can of Cola or iced coffee. Sure, these commodities are rather cheap but are they really worth it? Even small purchases tend to add up quickly.
A good marketing strategy is to throw you off with too many options
We all love having options. It gives us a sense of freedom. But too many options can quickly drain us of energy and unwillingly put us into a position where we say “yes” to many things we would otherwise consider carefully.
A good example are car sales. If you haven’t thought about the type of car you’d like to get beforehand, then the car dealer will play you like a fiddle and you wouldn’t even realize it.
Even if you already know that you want a specific type of car (let’s say a family van), the salesman will still tell you about other models and how they’d fit your needs in certain situations. Now you have to think about it and waste energy making a decision you already made.
If you’re looking for a used car, then you’ll additionally have to take into consideration the mileage offered, how maintained it is, and all the other aspects. You know well how stressful buying a car can be. The more options the salesman can show you, even if to just lightly consider whether it is worthwhile, the more energy you will waste in the process.
Then you finally make a decision on which car to buy. And now is the time for the salesman to truly shine. He will offer you a plethora of purchase plans with benefits and disadvantages. A whole stack of paper with small print will assist him in making your head spin. Would you like to purchase our extended warranty plan? Do you need additional insurance? The list goes on. By that time, you only want to take the car and get out.
You will not be able to make valuable trade-offs
Trade-off decisions are decisions in which you will have to weigh pro’s and con’s against each other. Like when comparing two different purchase plans. They count as more difficult decisions to make, as you have to find a trade-off that lies within your threshold of acceptable disadvantages.
But you’re already exhausted from the previous 30 decisions you had to make. So the salesman can use your inability to think clearly to his advantage. All he has to do is dictate to you which is the better option. To make themselves more trustworthy, they will talk about relatives or friends who took the options he advertises to you. Or he’ll talk about customer satisfaction with the options given.
In any case, he’ll pretty much steer your exhausted brain to come to his preferred conclusion.
To avoid decision fatigue, charge your batteries and reduce the load
If you know that you’ll be facing important decisions in the near future, save your brainpower. Recharge your batteries with some healthy energizers like bananas or apples. And try to make most decisions before you jump into the action. If you have to go shopping for groceries, plan ahead what you need and how much it will cost you. Eat some fruits before you go to not run out of energy.
Never go shopping on an empty stomach!
This will allow you to spend less time at the supermarket and get the shopping done quicker. If you know what to buy, you won’t be tasked too much with deciding (and depleting your energy) on the spot. You will reach the cashier much quicker and not feel tempted to buy snacks on the way out.
If you need to buy a car, take your time in researching all important factors online. If you can, take someone with you who’ll keep an eye on you during the negotiations. If a salesman is trying to sell you a specific deal, that friend or relative can give you some observant feedback.
We all suffer from decision fatigue and impulse purchases
Some of us have more willpower to withstand these subconscious lures. But most people suffer from ‘not thinking thoroughly enough’ once we get past a certain decision threshold. Our brain runs low on sugar, we feel tired and hungry and don’t feel like thinking about one thing too much.
That’s when we’re prone to bad decisions and impulse purchases. Keep your impulses at bay. Eat a banana!
Kevin is an editor and writer for the ILLUMINATION and Polyglot Poetry publications. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.