Smartphones are enabling people to shop smarter. Price comparison is instant with app’s on the iPhone and G1 allowing consumers to find deals, and sometimes negotiate a better offer. In most cases, retailers have been completely blind sided by the growing mobile bar code scanning trend.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing in increasing frequency mobiles impact on offline shopping behaviors.

Just the other month I had a shopper walk into the ski shop asking if we carried the Salomon Xwing 10. We didn’t have it, and I suggested taking a look at similar skis, but confessed I wasn’t too familiar with the particular ski he wanted. That’s when he whipped out his Moto phone and brought up the specs for the ski.

Knowing what he was looking for, I showed him a couple other skis close to the Salomon. Next he did something totally cool and unexpected, he googled the reviews for the skis and made a decision.

Talk about putting the consumer in the drivers seat!

For many retailers, I bet this type of customer control in the buying process has them quaking. But in reality it’s a good thing. You should stand by your prices, and if you can’t be the lowest then you’d better be competing on added value. Remember, people are still willing to pay a premium for service.

How To Address The Trend

I like how Wegmans is tackling an increasingly price conscious consumer with their comparison shopping signs.

Savvy retailers might take this a step further and encourage people to make price comparisons on the floor. One way to accomplish this is to place UPC codes in a more prominent position. Or perhaps borrow a strategy from Progressives playbook, and create a mobile friendly site that compares prices between you and the competition.

Of one thing I’m certain, mobile price comparisons will continue to grow, and if you’re a retailer, you don’t want to miss this opportunity.

I bet you can think of some creative ways retailers can benefit from the mobile upc price comparison trend, and would love to hear your input in the comments section.

Photo credit appleseed

Standing there, sweating and impatiently shifting weight from foot to foot I never imagined the situation would provide inspiration for blog fodder. One never really knows until the moment strikes.

Even though I’m the last person in a line of about 15 people, by some strange mechanics the two postal clerks are right in front of me. I had a front row seat to what happened next. A woman walks into the building, instead of getting in line behind me she walks up to the employees at the counter and asks, “Excuse me, I need to send this package right now. Could you help me?”

Replying rather gruffly, the postal worker pointed to the line, “You’ll have to wait like everyone else ma’am.”

And so the simple request ended unsatisfactorily for the woman, she sullenly waited in line like everyone ahead of her.

Even so, the woman’s failure got me thinking, what could she have done differently to achieve her desired outcome?

For starters, she should have directly addressed the people in line rather than the clerk.

More importantly, the woman should have provided a reason for her request. For instance, “Excuse me, I need to send this package right now because I have an appointment to make in 15 minutes,” would have increased the chance or her skipping to the front. As Robert Cialdini points out in his book, “Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive,” using the word “because” drastically increases the rate of compliance. He references a study by Ellen Langer, who showed that using because in a request to make Xerox copies ahead of someone else led to a 94% compliance rate versus 60% when no reason is supplied.

This held true, even when the reason is complete jibberish. The woman might have said, “Excuse me, may I get ahead of you because I have to mail this package?” Well, duh of course you’re here to mail the package, after all this is a post office. Despite unsound requests, the study Cialdini references shows people still maintained a high compliance of 93%.

However, the power of the word has it’s limits. If the woman had an armful of packages that needed to be weighed, people in line would be less receptive to letting her skip ahead. Plus, I’m confident that it has less effect with a crowd of people than just a handful.

What’s really interesting is how to take this knowledge and apply it to your business. The power of because also works in reverse. Research by Gregory Maio and colleagues shows that when people are asked to reiterate their reasons for doing business with a company they have a more favorable opinion of the business afterwards. In addition to providing valuable insights, those customer feedback surveys may allow long-time customers realize they’re decision to use you as a supplier is not out of habit but based on reason.

You should read Cialdini’s book “Yes,” because it raises awareness of how persuasive techniques affect you, and how you can use ethical strategies to be a better persuader. Not to mention the next time you’re at the post office it might get you through the line a little faster.

It’s brilliant creative. Unfortunately it’s ineffective because it fails to provide clear steps a person can take to prevent the long term consequence of cancer and death.

Research shows that while fear arousal is sufficient to influence attitudes, it must be paired with specific, detailed recommendations for a person to change their behavior. In this case, including booklets on “How To Quit Smoking,” provided by the US Dept. of Health & Human Services alongside the mural will be more effective than providing a quit smoking hotline phone number or nothing at all.

Remember that fear by itself only leads to inaction, you need to immediately provide concrete, achievable steps for the person to begin minimizing the risk.

On special holidays mom cooks pierogi for the family. She makes two kinds, those filled with mashed potatoe + cheese and the other with sauerkraut. What’s more, the pierogi I’ve had while eating out, and in the frozen section at Wegmans have stuck to this standard. For the longest time, if you asked me what I craved in a pierog it would have been mashed potatoe + cheese or sauerkraut.

That all changed when I visited the Rochester farmers market this past weekend. While walking past a food stand, my taste buds screamed at me to turn around. The menu had the normal variety of pierogie, in addition to a smorgash board of tantalizing fillings. These ranged from savory selections filled with bacon or packed with spinach, and sweet varieties stuffed with blueberries. In that moment my perception and appreciation for the humble perogie changed forever.

You might be thinking what’s the big deal? There are 15 variations of Dorito chips being sold. We live in world filled with food variety. True, but this has not always been the case. Malcolm Gladwell attributes the revolution in food companies offering products tailored by tastes to Howard Moskowitz. And it’s only been 20 years since Howard convinced Prego to launch their extra-chunky tomatoe sauce. Before that, we had been limited to buying plain sauce off the shelves.

Although we’ve seen an explosion in product variation there is still alot of variablility to discover in human preferences. This is especially true for service businesses, many who have yet to discover their niche. There needs to be more daring, spicy, chunky tomatoe sauce companies in the world. However, at the same time, you can’t rely on your customers to tell you outright what they want. People who’ve never tasted a blueberry perogie won’t be able to say that’s what they want until given a sample.

So here’s a few questions to ponder:

If people don’t know what they want, how do you determine their desires?

Is there a saturation point for choice? Reframing the question, is it possible to overwhelm with too much choice?

While a young boy my family use to keep Hereford cattle for a few years. Every couple months after the heifers had grazed the grass to nubs we’d move them to a new pasture. At first this proved to be an exerting task, involving a rope, prodding, pulling, pushing and cursing from all involved family members. Moving a few of these animals only a hundred yards turned into a spectacle because we made the mistake of only thinking about what we wanted. Meanwhile the heifers thought only about what their wants, refusing to budge.

The recurring situation only improved when we considered what would make the cattle want to move to a new enclosure. Food of course! Cutting a milk bottle in half, filling the one end with grain and walking the heifers into the pasture while they ate proved the trick.

My point isn’t to liken people to cattle, but if you’re going to persuade folks to do something you have to ask, ‘how can I make this person want to do it?’ In other words, stop speaking and writing about your desires, focus on what the other person wants and how they can get it.

Take the customers point of view in your web copy, advertising and face-to-face interactions and you’ll be able to influence people to buy.

Create relevant messages, know what customers value in your product or service… every marketer should embrace means-end analysis.

A Means End Theory Anecdote

At the ski shop we sell these uber cool bluetooth helmets from K2. You can synch the earpieces to a device like an iPhone, and listen to music or pause the melodies to answer an incoming phone call. I wouldn’t buy one because I consider the sport my refuge from the onslaught of technological-interconnectedness. However, personal preference aside, these helmets fly off the shelves each season like fudgicles in a sweltering summer afternoon.

Yet one particular sale stands out from the rest. A mother and son (probably 10-12 yrs old) walk into the shop. They’re going to Gore, and Billy needs a helmet. Billy trys on a few brands finally arriving at the K2.  He is tickled pink by the thought of listening to tunes, and chatting on the phone while skiing. If Billy’s going to be the envy of all his friends he’s got to have it. Mom rolls her eyes at the price but consents.

Then Billy, god bless him, does some selling for me, “Mom, if I’m wearing a helmet shouldn’t you too?” She’s holding his helmet, and puts it on for kicks, but being too small it cocks backwards funny like. At which point I mention we might have a larger size, not to mention Gore is a huge mountain, if the two should get separated it would be easier to get ahold of each other with bluetooth enabled helmets. Although she trys on a few more helmets, Mom also settles on buying herself a proper sized K2 helmet.

If you’ve been reading carefully you’ll notice that features and benefits are only part of the story as to why Billy and his Mom bought the bluetooth helmets. For Billy the benefit of listening to music or making phone calls translated into “envy from his friends,” otherwise known as enhanced self-esteem. Whereas the benefit of a quick phone call for Mom meant she can check in on Billy to know he is safe.

What Is Means-End Theory?

Billy and his Mom demonstrated what is known in consumer behavior as Means End Theory: People buy features that bring them benefits that get them closer to valued end states.

These are the possible Means-End Chains for Billy and his Mom:

Underlying values are the motivating factor in a consumer purchase. Therefore effective marketing messages that sell will connnect a benefit to values like security, achievement, belonging, fun, enjoyment, etc.

Means-End Theory In B2B

Speaking in terms of only features and benefits tends to remove emotions from the purchase equation. In B2B advertising, overemphasis is placed on benefits with valued end states being downplayed. Why does this occur? Because many B2B marketers operate under the assumption that B2B purchases are rational. In reality, decision makers are influenced by emotive propositions , in some cases more than they would be as individual consumers.

Means-End Marketing Applications

Mean End Theory is important to marketing on two fronts.

I touched on the first already, MEC provides a way to structure messaging. Identify a feature, linking it to a benefit that fulfills a personal valued-end state.

For example, IBM has transitioned itself from a hardware maker to an integrated systems provider. This Applications On Demand video reflects that approach. IBM provides a number of features: server, database administration, etc. These benefit HDR, whose employees have time more time to focus on the company’s core tasks (functional benefit). The message could have stopped there, but IBM clearly distinguishes itself in this ad as a company that is easy to do business with (an intangible, fundamental need of HDR). That valued-end state likely has the most and strongest connections to the multitude of features and benefits provided by IBM.

Second, you may be able reverse engineer the product/service. Knowing the valued-end state allows you work backward to build new features, or create new products and services of value. Using the means-end approach to gain customer insights is an important way to mitigate the risks of marketing failures in the product design and positioning phases.

Uncovering Means End Chains Using Laddering Interview

Where MEC is the visual representation of consumer associations, laddering interviews are the process by which those insights are derived. Typically, these involve in-depth, one-on-one interviewing techniques that are meant to uncover relations between attributes and associations with the self. For the purposes of this article I won’t mention how to carry out these interviews, saving that for a later date.

That’s All Folks!

Read any marketing literature, or the mass of blogs devoted to the topic and a key theme throughout is relevancy. Missing are the practical applications of how to achieve that end. Since it explores underlying values, Means-End Theory is an important scientific tool for creating relevant messaging and services that influence customer purchase decisions.

or…

Call it a hunch, but I bet more people will be inclined to buy VisualDX after reading the second blurb. To help explain why, an MIT professor, Dan Ariely, says it best, we are called into action by emotions – we see a cute toddler in trouble, and our hearts go to her but numbers and statistics numb our emotions and reduce our motivation to act.

The implication for marketers is clear. The power of a riveting story is more likely to evoke visceral emotions and spur the reader to action. A captivating yarn beats hard facts any day.

Hmm. The video has been removed, I’ll see if I can find it somewhere on d’ ol Internet.

Taking the video at face value you might be inclined to believe that compliments have an equal value to winning money. There may even be a few marketers re-evaluating their rewards programs right now,  though don’t expect any of us to begin dropping prizes and cash incentives in favor of compliments. In fact, it would not be wise to take that action, since further examination of the study shows that monetary rewards activate more portions of the striatum than a social reward. Meaning cash is not interchangeable with a compliment.

Yet it is interesting to consider the possibility of increasing the opportunities for praising customers, and what effect that may have on your business.  It would be hard to create a structured compliment program without it feeling disingenuous to people. So your best bet for improving your customers’ compliment happiness index is the people who you hire, and the quality of their training.

An interesting follow up study would be examining the relationship between a customer who received a compliment and her propensity to buy non-intended items versus a person receiving regular service without any praise.

If only that Target chick made note of how well the graphic tee-shirt showed off my chiseled abs, I would have purchased another one to go with it.

Disclaimer: I only wish I had chiseled abs.