Companies, or whole industries, often work to train their customers to behave or respond to signals in expected ways. Pavlov called it conditioning. For example, movies usually open on Friday, unless they are expecting a big audience then it is Thursday. We respond to this by having increased expectations for movies that open on Thursdays. DVDs start selling on Tuesday and are usually discounted the first week. We respond to this by buying most DVDs the first week they come out if we think we are ever going to want it.
Why train customers? So that it is easier to predict their behavior. It also helps to have a big opening week. A big opening makes news. News means free publicity. More publicity, usually means more sales. Training customers can save money, time, and reduce payroll costs. Training customers can be a barrier to entry against competitors. Big video rental chains created an expectation of finding lots of copies of new releases. This practice made life difficult for small stores.
There are other examples of customer training that are less obvious and strategies that are beginning to backfire...
Training customers that resell your product is an important training situation. You want to be certain that they know how to resell your product and that they know how to instruct the final customer. Training your customers that are first time buyers on how your products work is another important case but not what I am trying to address here.
What I want to briefly highlight are situations where a company or industry creates an expectation or conditioned response as a result of a practice or procedure.
We have been conditioned to expect a new car to have a certain smell. When we get in a car and we smell that smell we know it's new. We know that memory, drive space, and processor speeds change every 6 months. (When we buy a computer, we know it will be out of date in 6 months as well.) Grocery stores started moving the cart returns closer to the front to reduce theft. We are now conditioned to bring the carts back thus saving the store from sending someone out into the parking lot to retrieve the carts.
What are ways that you have observed customer conditioning?
Did you feel manipulated?
How could your business train customers to improve your ability to retain them and to improve profits?
There are instances where this starts to work against the company or industry. Grocery stores know that eye level is the best place to put products. Customers are now trained to look elsewhere to find the best bargain. Big sales happen after a major holiday - so customers are now trained to wait until after the holiday to return items and use that money to buy something at a lower price. Everyone knows that DVD prices will drop a few months after the release on most movies - so people wait for the movie to end up in a discount bin who did not want to pay full price.
Possibly the program that has now become a burden in some cases is the return policy that allows the customer to "buy" an item on Friday and return it on Monday with no questions asked. Customers are now conditioned to expect to wear or use something for the weekend and return it, even if the item was what they wanted. Money-back guarantees are a great thing when it means reducing customer reluctance to try something new. Money-back guarantees with no questions become a nightmare when they are abused. Yet, if companies want to track who frequently returns items they are accused of violating their customers' privacy.
Can you think of other instances where customer conditioning backfired?
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