This is definitely an interesting topic — What makes us buy?
I must first give credits to two important people here. Jason Capital, whom I learnt a lot from, first introduced this book to his students in one of his book recommendation list, and I put that on my wish list immediately. Also, Ringo Li (https://www.ringoli.net), whom I also learnt a lot from. When I told Ringo Li I was reading the Millionaire Fastlane about a couple of months ago, he immediately told me that he also loved this author and you know what this means? It means I gotta read all of this author’s book.
Anyways, back to the topic. What makes us buy? Is it sale? Is it because something is cheap? Or is it nice packaging? What makes us buy?
MJ DeMarco in his book, Unscripted (2017), talked about this. And while there are lots of valuable insights in the book (truthfully, read it, it’s long… and thick… though) I really like this part of the book because it is very practical and real.
There are three things that make us buy.
1. Economic value: the value of the product to us. For example, we go to the gym often recently, and we started to want to wear better gym clothes to the gym. So therefore, in our eyes, gym apparel has value. We might spend a few hundreds or even thousands on them. This is very subjective. To someone who never workouts but has other interests eg. Wine tasting, he might think there is completely no value in gym clothes. Even you give a bag of nice gym clothes to him for $10 he might as well say no to the offer. However, he might spend a few thousands on a bottle of wine easily. Value is subjective. But to make us buy, the thing must have economic value to us at that particular price point.
2. Risk: are there any risks attached to this transaction? Eg. In the wine example, will this wine taste good enough for that price? Has anyone tasted this before? Or would it be something that no one knows how it taste like and there might be a risk that this taste like just water? To make us buy, the risk has to be low enough that we decided to go for it. It might not be ZERO risk. But it has to be low enough for us to make a decision to buy.
3. Convenience: The more convenient, the better. To make us buy, it should be convenient for us to buy. For example, supermarkets deliberately put those little candies and chocolates near the checkout counters, so that it will be so easy for us to pick them up and buy (gosh I am also a victim for this!) Even if the risk could be not low (maybe is a new flavour) and the economic value might not be that high (they serve no value at all except satisfying your crave for sweetness) for these little “impulsive pickups”, these still sell decently well because of how convenient they are.
Got it? Good.
Promise me to find a way to use these? Good.
Until next time, R2R —> out.