From Hassle to Convenience
by Kate Nightingale, Consumer Psychologist @ HUMANISING BRANDS
From Hassle to Convenience and Impulsive Spending
This is a series of 4 articles, in conversation with OLR where we are exploring the behavioural/psychological underpinnings of various retail technologies and how these can be extremely valuable to your brand. The fourth and last episode of our four-part series of articles on the behavioural/psychological look at retail tech concludes with an exploration of the necessity for human’s sense of control and oh such importance to retailers’ phenomenon of impulsive spending. Go ahead and impulsively dig into the story.
Human Sense of Control
The simple act of choosing to pick up your order in-store is about control. The human sense of control is crucial to our overall well-being and has been tried and tested since the beginning of the pandemic. This means that it became one of the strongest motivators of our shopping behaviour. There are many ways to help a customer increase their sense of control, including allowing them to choose which courier will deliver their order, presenting them with an option to offset their carbon footprint or giving them the option to personalise their product. Customers will naturally navigate to the brands that allow them more control and even impact over their brand.
Click & Collects and Impulsive Spending
A great benefit of Click & Collect comes in the form of impulsive spending, i.e.: some research has indicated that even up to 50% of customers collecting their order make an impulsive purchase. It is partially due to the mere exposure effect – a phenomenon describing a growing liking of a product due to repeated exposure to it. The customer has likely seen it on your website when ordering, probably it passed their eyes on social media and is now in-store. The growing familiarity with the product creates a higher liking of it and can result in impulse purchases.
Choosing Sustainability
As the customer shops while collecting their order, they can be subtly reminded how they are helping to reduce packaging waste or limit their carbon footprint. Such a reminder will make their sustainable contribution more salient in their minds resulting in a sense of achievement which will actually make them feel more in control, and more able to make an impact. And because the human brain is wired to reward itself for good deeds, it is likely that the customer will further justify their purchase, giving it a much higher overall value or even buy another product to congratulate themselves.
The power of digital wallets
A customer then chooses to pay for their order as well as return one of the items they collected using their digital wallet and your employee is perfectly prepared to do it instantly on their mobile device thanks to Pockyt and Oracle Xmobile checkout. They continue to browse or sit on a comfy sofa while your employee quickly sets up the order on their mobile and the customer pays there and then, no need for queueing, removing yet another chance for meaningless friction.
Not only does a digital wallet has many benefits like instant payment and improved security, by making the customer feel even more in control, it limits the chance of overthinking their purchase (an activity normally performed in long queues), making it less likely they will drop any of their chosen products before it comes to payment.
Allowing to check out while sitting comfortably anywhere in the store not only makes the whole experience more pleasurable, leading to higher satisfaction, but it also reinforces intimacy, one of the six key pillars of consumer-brand relationships; therefore leading to stronger and more durable relationships. You will be certain to also benefit from some positive word-of-mouth, which we all know is the best and often the cheapest form of advertising.
The End
As you can see, throughout this series of articles I went through the behavioural underpinnings of various retail technologies explaining why they work and showed ways in which technology can help to considerably reduce meaningless friction and even occasionally offer opportunities for meaningful friction. All without exception, having a positive impact on building stronger, more loyal and more trustworthy relationships with your customers as well as presenting more immediate rewards like extra sales. Basically, a no-brainer.
If you have more questions about consumer psychology or the technology integration behind it, get in touch with KATE NIGHTINGALE or OLR respectively.
To learn more about our partner technology, get in touch with:
Digital Wallets - Pockyt
References:
Mortimer, G & Grimmer, L. (2017). Why retailers want you to “click and collect”. The Conversation. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/why-retailers-want-you-to-click-and-collect-83094