The Best Psychology Studies To Influence Your Marketing

Psychology can be defined as “the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context”. In this way, it is clear that using psychology can be extremely beneficial to your marketing plans, as marketing acts as a way to influence consumers to purchase your products or services or, in other words, to influence their buying behaviours. A clear intersection between psychology and marketing is demonstrated in the following studies.

The Foot-In-The-Door Technique

As an individual who has studied Psychology extensively, this method is a personal favourite. The premise is that when you are asked to do a small favour or make a small commitment first, you are more likely to agree to a larger commitment later even if you would have originally refused the larger request. Picture this, you bump into a friend and they ask you if you could hold on to their crying baby for 5 minutes while they go and get a coffee. Ok, sure, no problem, its only 5 minutes. With the baby in your arms and your friend freshly loaded with their caffeine fix, your friend says she needs to go to an appointment which will last around 90 minutes and if you could look after the baby until she’s finished as she doesn’t want to take the baby to the appointment with her. You’ve already said yes to five minutes, so you guess an extra 85 won’t hurt, particularly as it will feel a little awkward to decline now you’re holding on to her baby.

In a similar way, Freedman and Fraser conducted a study where they called some households and asked them which household products they use. Several days later, they called again but asked if they could send a group of their staff to the house to manually write down the cleaning products in their home. Results showed that women who had responded to the first phone call were twice as likely to agree to the second request.

Therefore, if you can send out great content in emails that customers want to open or amazing downloadable content, then they are more likely to agree to perhaps sharing your content or sending it to a friend.

If you liked this study, we have a few more lined up for you in this article series out next week!