Latest / Best of Business / Ekant Veer: University of Canterbury marketing professor reveals why we find free promotions irresistible

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Ekant Veer: University of Canterbury marketing professor reveals why we find free promotions irresistible · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now you know how obsessed we all are with the
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  Speaker 2: supermarket giveaways, the Disney discs, the snake braser and so on. Well,
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  Speaker 2: if you are, don't feel bad. It's not an accident.
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  Speaker 2: It's psychology. It can't Via as a professor of marketing
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  Speaker 2: at the University of Canterbury. Hey, I can't.
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  Speaker 3: How are you going?
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  Speaker 2: I'm very well, thank you? So what is it? Why
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  Speaker 2: are we so into this stuff?
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  Speaker 3: So? This stuff works because every human, regardless of how
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  Speaker 3: conscious you might be, loves to feel like they've won something,
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  Speaker 3: especially if it's for free. And so when the supermarkets
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  Speaker 3: are offering a way of kind of enticing you into
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  Speaker 3: their shop versus someone else's, and we feel like we're
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  Speaker 3: getting rewarded for our loyalty or rewarded for our good behavior,
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  Speaker 3: then it's going to work for us. We're going to
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  Speaker 3: get that little dopamine here to say, yep, if I
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  Speaker 3: keep collecting, if I keep getting this, I might get
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  Speaker 3: my reward at the end.
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  Speaker 2: But does it always work? Because I love the idea
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  Speaker 2: of the snake knives and the pots and all that stuff.
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  Speaker 2: But those Disney discs, I just taken of them. Why
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  Speaker 2: they mean nothing to me exactly.
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  Speaker 3: And what you've basically identified is that what is valuable
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  Speaker 3: for you is not necessarily valuable for someone else, and
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  Speaker 3: vice versa. So we pick up the Disney discs to
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  Speaker 3: give to friends who have younger kids. You know, our
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  Speaker 3: kids are eighteen and twenty. They don't need that sort
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  Speaker 3: of stuff. We ourselves are not swayed by these sorts
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  Speaker 3: of promotions because we're very conscious about what impact they have.
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  Speaker 3: But most of the people out there are not thinking
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  Speaker 3: consciously about what they're buying at that time. And it's
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  Speaker 3: kind of like a little bit bit of emotional pattern
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  Speaker 3: the back to say thank you for coming into a
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  Speaker 3: new world or countdown or whatever, and here you go.
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  Speaker 3: So depending on what the prize is will depend on
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  Speaker 3: the target audience, and you'll see that new World, for example,
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  Speaker 3: targets people very specifically based on their client base, will
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  Speaker 3: worth the same. They try to find the rewards that
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  Speaker 3: work for their people or what would attract people to
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  Speaker 3: their store.
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  Speaker 2: Having said that, it count. I'm just reflecting on my
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  Speaker 2: behavior now, and even though I hate the Disney discs
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  Speaker 2: with the passion that I cannot explain. I never ask
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  Speaker 2: them not to give them to me, and I always
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  Speaker 2: take them, even to give them to somebody else. So
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  Speaker 2: it's working on me, isn't it.
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  Speaker 3: It's working in you in a sense because you've got that.
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  Speaker 3: But has it changed your behavior to get you into
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  Speaker 3: Woolworths is the real question. If it hasn't changed your behavior,
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  Speaker 3: like you're always going into the same Wallies every time,
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  Speaker 3: or you're going into the same supermarket every time, then
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  Speaker 3: it's not really changed much of your behavior. But you
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  Speaker 3: grabbing them, even if it's to chuck in the bin,
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  Speaker 3: is another kind of social cue. If someone's offered you something,
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  Speaker 3: it's rude to say no thanks, I don't want your hospitality.
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  Speaker 3: But if you are taking it and giving it to
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  Speaker 3: someone else, and then that is a way of extending
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  Speaker 3: your sense of monarchy to someone else, then yeah, that's
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  Speaker 3: the way that the supermarkets win as well.
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  Speaker 2: Akin, thanks very much, appreciate it. It can't be a Professor
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  Speaker 2: of Marketing, University of Canterbury.
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