Latest / Best of Business / Gary Mortimer: Queensland University of Technology Marketing Professor on the rise of free 'dopamine apps'

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Gary Mortimer: Queensland University of Technology Marketing Professor on the rise of free 'dopamine apps' · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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  Speaker 1: together do for ce Ellen.
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  Speaker 2: The Pack and Save are also franchises same same Thank you, Greg,
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  Speaker 2: nineteen past five. Now, as I told you, apparently people
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  Speaker 2: have taken to a weird thing online, which is that
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  Speaker 2: they order fake takeaways that never arrive and they fill
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  Speaker 2: their online shopping carts and then they never click through.
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  Speaker 2: They never get a thing, but they go through this
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  Speaker 2: whole process because that chasing a dopamine hit. Gary Mortimer
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  Speaker 2: is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior at Queensland University
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  Speaker 2: of Technology and with us.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, Gary, Hi, great to chat.
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  Speaker 2: It's good to talk to you. This is mental, isn't
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  Speaker 2: it like that the dopamine is that addicted that you
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  Speaker 2: have to go through this process.
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  Speaker 3: It is quite bizarre. And when I started reading these
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  Speaker 3: these articles about dopamine apps or dopamine sites, I did
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  Speaker 3: have to do a little bit of research and sort
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  Speaker 3: of scratch my head the whole time. And essentially they
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  Speaker 3: are as you describe them, that they're designed to mimic
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  Speaker 3: an online shopping platform for fashion or a food delivery
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  Speaker 3: app like door Dash or e breats. You go through
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  Speaker 3: the same process. You know, you go through cuisines and restaurants,
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  Speaker 3: You select your items. If you're shopping online for fashion,
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  Speaker 3: you pick a couple of items, you put them into
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  Speaker 3: your basket. With the food shopping app, you can actually
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  Speaker 3: watch sort of track and deliver to your house, but
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  Speaker 3: it never arrives. You never charge for anything, and it's
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  Speaker 3: designed just to keep people, I guess, away from boredom
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  Speaker 3: in many ways, is what they're suggesting.
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  Speaker 2: Really, I mean, what is it that sad that we
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  Speaker 2: as wisdom are so bored that we have to do
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  Speaker 2: these fake things.
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  Speaker 3: So the research I did sort of scratch my headle
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  Speaker 3: of this myself, the research of the show that we're
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  Speaker 3: more inclined to do our online shopping interest see what
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  Speaker 3: your listeners have to say about this. But generally, in
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  Speaker 3: the evenings, after we've got home from work, we've had dinner,
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  Speaker 3: we sit down and we go, oh, we might just
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  Speaker 3: pick up our smartphone and have a little look what's
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  Speaker 3: available online, and before no, before you know, we're sort
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  Speaker 3: of shopping online and we're buying things online. So these
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  Speaker 3: sites are designed to sort of give you that same
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  Speaker 3: I guess feeling of control, gamification, the anticipation finding something new,
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  Speaker 3: the same experience, the same excitement, but without having to
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  Speaker 3: pay for anything at.
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  Speaker 2: The end of the day, Gary, is there anything wrong
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  Speaker 2: with people chasing all those little dopamine hits, Like? Is
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  Speaker 2: there a downside to that?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? I guess there's a couple. Number one is that
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  Speaker 3: this notion of a gateway behavior. And while these types
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  Speaker 3: of sites are very new, they're only starting to emerge now.
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  Speaker 3: There's been plenty of studies around sort of gambling sites,
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  Speaker 3: so free gambling sites where you're not really gambling, you're
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  Speaker 3: not using real money. A number of studies have shown
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  Speaker 3: that if you start to play with these sites early enough,
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  Speaker 3: you get that hit, that dopamine hip, you're more inclined
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  Speaker 3: to shop to gamble with real money on real sites.
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  Speaker 3: And the other one is privacy. Of course, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: if you put anything online or put anything into an app,
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  Speaker 3: it's obviously going to be tracked and the data sold elsewhere.
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  Speaker 3: And certainly the online shopping platform Dopamine Shop will actually
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  Speaker 3: very happily discloses it will track your cookies, it will
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  Speaker 3: sort of track what items you put into your cart
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  Speaker 3: and how much you intend to spend. So you can
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  Speaker 3: imagine if you're buying that fake cashmere coat, probably next
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  Speaker 3: week that a real cashmere coat will pop up on
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  Speaker 3: your Facebook feed looking to be purchased.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah I hear, Yeah, Hey Gary, thanks very much man,
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  Speaker 2: this is really fascinating stuff. Gary Mortimer, Professor of Marketing
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  Speaker 2: and Consumer Behavior at Queensland University of Technology.
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