Salespeople are the masters of social psychology tricks for compliance. They take advantage of these in order to get people to buy their products, which I have witnessed far too many times. Living in the apartments at SU, I have had magazine salesmen (who are far too grungy and sketchy looking to trust) knock on my door to sell me subscriptions.They are confident, friendly and first start up a conversation with whoever answers the door, which leads them to the Foot-in-the-Door Technique (which they take literally!). This technique involves the salesperson first requesting something small of the customer in order to set the stage for a much larger request that he asks later. If the person agrees to the first request, he/she is much more likely to agree to the second, larger one (Cialdini, 2007). This may be due to self-perception--that is, if we see ourselves complying to the smaller request, we realize that we must be open to the salesperson and therefore continue to comply to be consistent.
To apply this back to the magazine salesmen, they first ask to be invited in (or invite themselves in!) in the hopes that, by letting them in, the customer will be receptive to his larger request of buying a magazine subscription. After all, they already let him in, and why would they have done that if they were not interested? Even if they were not intending to buy a magazine, the potential buyers may rationalize the fact that they let a strange, sketchy person into their apartment by thinking to themselves that they might actually be interested in subscribing to a magazine.
The salesmen also use the That's Not All Technique, for which he makes a large request (a high-priced magazine, for example), and then decreases its apparent size by throwing in a bonus or reducing the price, thus making it more appealing to the buyer because they would be getting a deal (Burger, 1986). Thus, in order to sell magazines, they show the buyer a list of all the different magazines he/she could subscribe to, most of which have inflated prices listed. Then, before the buyer can say no, the salesman offers a lower price for a magazine that the buyer is interested in, or else he offers to include an extra one for a low price. These salesmen use all the social psychology tricks in the book, never taking no for an answer and never backing down until the customer finally kicks them out.
Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: HarperCollins.
Burger, J. M. (1986). Increasing compliance by improving the deal: The that's-not-all technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 277-283.
So, reading this brought back a memory from a few years back (like four) when my mom and I were tricked by a magazine guy. He was actually a really attractive college student. He was really great at telling us about himself so he seemed more relatable to us. He got us to purchase magazines, which we never received by telling us what a great deal it was and that by subscribing we were subscribing for the troops overseas as well.
ReplyDeleteWe are so silly. Smart tricksters they are.