Marketing tricks. How to deceive customers in stores. Marketing gimmicks Less is more

The author does not sell any of the products listed below, is in no way affiliated with the manufacturers or their competitors. He chose goods from a similar class only because they lay closer and more accessible on the shelf, attracted more attention than neighboring ones. important principle. There are plenty of analogues of marketing tricks. All judgments, in particular regarding specific products and brands, are estimates. The author does not like the deception of customers in stores.

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Let's start with milk. This is the usual "liter" package of milk:

Check for attentiveness: there are 900 grams. There are several 950 nearby. But the package is perceived as a liter.

Physics knowledge test. Nearby lies a similar kefir. Volume is measured in milliliters, mass in grams. The density of kefir is higher than the density of water. That is, 900 grams of kefir with 3.2% fat content is approximately 874.5 milliliters.

"Now without asbestos"

On the product, unscrupulous marketers can indicate something very obvious that competitors forgot to write. Here is a cholesterol-free oil that exploits the buyer's biological illiteracy:

And no nuclear waste. It is strange that this is not indicated on the label.

Biochemistry check: in vegetable oil cholesterol simply can not be. But you have to write. You can write "no metal shavings or sand."

Another example is soy-free sausages. Very roughly speaking, if you do not make them from meat, then there are only two options left - soy texturate or fat emulsion. So, on those without texture, it is quite logical to write that they are without soy. The fact is that the buyer may decide that this statement is identical to the statement "from normal meat."

Mimicry or outright deception of the buyer

You can disguise yourself as a well-known class of goods. For example, there is margarine, and there is butter. It is enough to formalize margarine as butter and not write on it either the word "butter" or the word "margarine".

First, evaluate the coloration. Straight poured oil, huh? Secondly, pay attention to the name - you will guess it only on the third attempt (it is on the price tag). The gender of the name is very important. Third, the price tag itself. Relatively recently, standards have changed, and the price tag was forced to indicate the type of product - in this case It's not butter, it's spread. But the law obliging to keep butter and margarine on different shelves somehow did not work out.

Here's another particular example mimicry: a product of the store's own brand is shuffled into a pile of chocolates (if it were not a private label, it would be put separately):

Confectionery bar without adding cocoa in the shelf with chocolate on the left and right.

Read the ingredients carefully

Let's move on to nimble movements with the components.

Caviar. The word "delicacy" does not oblige you to anything. Well, suddenly someone likes potatoes more than caviar, right? After all, there is still caviar inside. And the capelin on the lid was forgotten by accident, probably.

"Without preservatives" - but lemon acid in composition. The fact is that this thing is both a flavoring agent, and an acidity regulator, and a rather strong preservative. If it is included in the composition of the class of acidity regulators, then the preservatives magically disappear from the composition. Miracle!

I have always wondered to the point of madness who these young bulls are at such a price. Well, I found out.

One gets the impression that "on the basis of" is "straight naturally from them." Of course, I'm not an expert, but judging by the components, there are few cones, but there is a well-known Sodium Laureth Sulfate and some elegantly named Aqua.

Sodium lauryl sulfate is a strong cleaning agent, which, according to the wiki, can also be a strong allergen. And the final touch - it seems that vitamin B6 stimulates hair growth, and not the product itself - well, judging by the packaging. There is no need to prove this about vitamins. So what if the rest are not signed?

Here are the good old ones crab sticks. And although they are not from crab (which everyone seems to already know), the manufacturer still honestly warns on the packaging that they are from fish:

Imitation crab meat. Just an established name.

Read footnotes carefully

What else can be found:

• Apple juice . Write the composition on the label, but do not write mass fractions. As a result, fill in 5% apple juice natural, then water, sometimes sugar syrup, sweeteners and flavor, fragrance;
• Tomato juice. According to technology, it is made from tomato paste. Neither mass fraction nor % dry matter in tomato paste almost no one writes on the label of tomato juice;
• Fruit juice. The base is 5% apple juice, then the coloring agent, sweetener and desired flavor.
• Fruit juice with pulp. The same as fruit juice, just a little applesauce, how many% read;
• Sausages. Some manufacturers honestly indicate the composition, but do not indicate mass fractions. Maybe there is 80% soy protein, and the meat is added in the form of a broth?

Note: To check how much fruit you need for juice, buy fresh fruit and squeeze the juice out of them, weigh the juice. Usually the juice yield is not more than 20-40%, and it is generally impossible to get juice from some fruits, for example, from bananas.

Also think about how much real natural juice can cost and what you buy for a penny.

When going to visit our friends, we often go for a small gift or a souvenir so as not to come empty-handed. And as a result, we leave the store, loaded with huge packages, with a lot of unnecessary purchases. Why is this happening? What pushes us to such rash purchases? Maybe magic?

But there is no mysticism or magic in this - this is a properly built, carefully thought-out and planned marketing. It is on all these tricks of sellers that we come across: we go to the store for a cake, we see a lot of “profitable” offers and we can no longer stop.

The 13 Most Common Tricks of Smart Marketers.

Forewarned is forearmed!

1. Association of red with discounts

All supermarkets outside have many posters, advertising banners, "shouting" about the variety of discounts and promotions. Discounts are always highlighted in red. Our subconscious mind plays a cruel joke with our consciousness - as soon as we see a red color, we immediately, automatically rush to this product. But how? After all, it's a discount!

Do not rush, you do not need to immediately grab a "profitable" product - most often this discount is small or non-existent.

2. Carts too big

All supermarkets are actively using scent marketing to increase the purchasing power of their customers. Each department has its own "smell", because the human nose has certain expectations for each of the store's departments.

For example, the aroma of freshly baked bread will push him to buy something in the confectionery department, and the gentle subtle smell of perfume will not allow a woman to leave the cosmetic department without a purchase. The fact is that as soon as we hear pleasant aromas, dopamine, the hormone of pleasure, begins to be actively produced in our brain. We immediately begin to feel the anticipation of a good shopping experience and buy something that we would not even think of buying in another situation.

Advice to shoppers: enjoy the fragrances, smell all those fragrances, but don't forget that you are being subtly manipulated into buying unnecessary goods. Be sure to go to the supermarket with a list of necessary purchases. And most importantly - do not forget to read it periodically. All marketers and merchandisers are powerless in front of a client with a shopping list.

All sorts of tastings are often held in supermarkets, and mostly in the afternoon, in the late afternoon, when a tired, hungry and angry stream of customers pours into the store. Lovely, smiling girls and helpful guys offer to taste juicy sausage, the freshest cheese, the most tender bacon. Well, how can you stay here? The natural reaction of someone who tasted this "yummy" would be to go and get something for themselves at home. And what is most interesting, few people pay attention to the fact that the cost of this product is much higher than he could afford to spend. People already notice this at home when they review the check.

Never go shopping hungry.

Without exception, all supermarkets are actively using this cunning and beneficial trick for them.
With the help of music, you can easily manage the flow of customers. For example, if the owner wants to increase his sales, then slow, calm music will play in his store. What will happen to buyers? They will begin to linger at the shelves, they will have a feeling of comfort, measured slow music evens out the pulse of a person. As a result, the customer spends more time in the store.
At peak times, active, rhythmic music always plays in supermarkets. This is another smart marketing ploy - people are encouraged to make purchases as quickly as possible and leave the store. As a result, a person "rakes up" a bunch of goods that he did not need - the rush has done its job.

An interesting fact: a certain musical direction can regulate the sales of a particular product. Marketers conducted an amazing experiment: in the wine department, where Australian, Chilean, French and Italian wine was sold, only French music was played for a week. The results stunned everyone: the number of sales of French brands of wine amounted to 70% of the total turnover in 7 days!

9. I'm in a hurry!

In expensive departments, the floors are laid out with small tiles. As a result, when you pass there, the cart starts to rattle louder, as if hinting that it is empty. natural reaction a person - you need to fill it up, and also slow down a little, because it goes too fast (it seems to him). Such a slowdown in an expensive department plays into the hands of the store owner - an expensive purchase is made, a profit is received, which means that marketing has done its job.

10. Successful left-right formula

Traffic in supermarkets is most often organized counterclockwise.

The buyer is forced to turn left all the time, and his eyes always fall into the middle of the right side. As you probably already guessed, they often post either expired goods or expensive ones. No, no, but one of the visitors will buy it.

11. Obfuscation with complex prices

Stimulation of buyers for large purchases occurs due to the "confusion" in prices. These cherished “0.99 kopecks” warm the souls of many buyers, it seems to them that a penny will help save a lot: a penny on that product, on the second, that’s a ruble.

American scientists have proven that the highest demand for a product from a buyer occurs when he sees a price tag ending in "9". The explanation for this is simple - a person always reads from left to right, and when he sees the price of 1.99 rubles, he perceives the first digit - 1. On a subconscious level, such a price will be perceived as one that is closer to 1 ruble than to 2. In other words, those price tags that end in 9 are always associated with the buyer with a bargain price.

And often in stores you can see price tags with the old price crossed out (written in very small letters) and with a brightly highlighted new price. Take a closer look and do not be too lazy to calculate the difference - you will make a lot of discoveries for yourself.

12. Little things at the checkout

At the cash desk there are always stands with various pleasant little things: chewing gums, condoms, chocolate bars, cookies, packaged coffee and other “goodies”, the price of which at first glance is quite low. While we are standing in line, we involuntarily pay attention to all this. The thought immediately arises in the brain that this bar, for example, is incredibly tasty, or this commercial is beautiful. And something from the shelf migrates to the basket.

13. Window dressing and gifts

Storefronts are designed by professional designers who are trained in marketing strategies. They make us stop and admire all this beauty. Of course, the idea that this particular product is beautiful, it is advertised, which means it is popular, is postponed in the brain. It needs to be bought.
The display of goods on the shelves takes place according to the principle - all the most beautiful (read - expensive) and with an expiring shelf life is at the beginning. The buyer does not want to bother to dig and look for something in the bowels of the shelf, so he will take the product or product that lies on top. And the phrase “The second product as a gift!” also attracts. For example, nuts or crackers are often “free” for beer, and juice or a bottle of soda for cookies.

Believe me, such gifts are already included in the price of the goods, and if you are not too lazy to find them separately, you will understand that they are much more expensive in pairs.

Shock! Sale!

Beneath this bright poster, there may be another product of the same brand, which is no longer covered by the discount. Discounted goods may not be available at all. “It’s over,” the cashier will say, and you won’t be able to present any claims to him. I didn't look at what I took.

1. THE WAY IS NOT CLOSE

The most popular and inexpensive products - bread, milk, all kinds of cereals, pasta - are located in the farthest corner of the supermarket. So that on the way for a bottle of kefir and half a loaf you have time to go through all the departments and stuff something unnecessary, but terribly seductive, into the cart.

Output Go shopping with a list. It does not matter, from his wife or from himself - the list disciplines. Taking the cart, with a firm step, go to that very far department (unless, of course, there is bread / milk on the list). Stop only if you come across a refrigerator with your favorite ice cream along the way. The danger that the ice cream will turn into milk soup if you get stuck at the shelf with elite nonsense will make you run away from this shelf in a panic.

2. GO LEFT

What are moonlight-cured fern flowers doing in your cart? Congratulations, you fell for a classic marketing trick when laying out products. The average customer looks at the shelves in front of them from top to bottom, at an angle of about 15-30 degrees. “It is at this level that the most expensive goods or those that are past their expiration date.- warns Dmitry Yanin, chairman of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies.

Output Heading deeper into the trading floor, the average buyer out of habit takes to the right - as on the road he drives in the right lane. It is in these right aisles between the shelves that everything is unnecessary, but bright and alluring.

3. UNIQUE OFFER

When buying dumplings, you will probably want to take ketchup with them, and a couple of liters of cola with a bottle of rum. Marketers, knowing this, arrange racks around the store with "special offers" of two complementary products. You feel like you're making a good buy, but be careful: this ketchup and this cola will most likely be in a significantly higher price range than you usually charge.

Output If there is a choice between a trolley and a basket, take the basket. If a cunning supermarket offers only carts (assuming that this way you won’t pay attention to how much nonsense you have collected) - proudly smiling, take out the canvas bag that you carry for such occasions from your briefcase. By the way, and you will pump up your hands.

4. PEAR - DO NOT EAT

Fruits and vegetables can be sold both by weight and by the piece, already in the package. Accordingly, the price is also indicated - either per kilo or per package. Supermarkets deliberately confuse you, trying to prevent you from choosing what is cheaper.

Output If you have free time - check prices. On the labels of piece goods, as a rule, the price per kilogram is indicated - in the corner and in small print. If there is no time, take it by weight, you will definitely not lose. In addition, this way you have the opportunity to take exactly as much as you need for a week, without fear of throwing out the uneaten later.

5. EXPENSIVE COLORS

The monotonous rows of cans of stew and packages of pasta are sure to be painted with bright spots - a figured layout, advertising posters with the same special offers, or some bright jar-box. Here you will stop in front of it.

Output"Never go shopping in a hurry - you will grab the bright boxes of the most popular manufacturers, instead of comparing the price and composition of different products," says US marketing gimmick consultant Brenda Soars. And it never hurts to check the expiration date.

6. LESS IS BETTER?

“The same product, for example, coffee, is packaged in different volumes - 250 and 500 g, for example. Out of habit, believing that a large package is more profitable, buyers take it. And the supermarket can make a special markup on such packaging in order to deceive you, ” Yanin says.

Output Do not be lazy to calculate the cost of a gram of product in different packaging. But since this advice is too obvious, here's another general one for you. First of all, buy the most bulky goods - water bottles, packages of kitchen towels. Having filled the basket with them, you are less likely to put various useless trifles on top of the slide.

7. A FITTED UNDERSTANDS

In almost all supermarkets, vegetable and fruit sections are located at the very entrance. “Freshness and brightness meet the visitor at the doorstep, so that it seems to him that everything is just as tasty and natural”,- says Dmitry Yanin, chairman of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies. Behind the vegetables there is a bread section - so that its smell whets the appetite and makes you buy, as before the end of the world.

Output Eat before going to the store. And something with more fiber, slow carbohydrates, so as not to get hungry longer and not be tempted by some rubbish. And don't drink, of course. They say that in the early 90s, drunken Volodya Presnyakov bought a penguin at the Moscow zoo - at night, from the watchman, for hellish money. This is what we mean by impulse buying. But we don't believe this story, of course.

Shopping in recent times turned into a real quest. Every now and then we are brazenly and unashamedly deceived in stores, adding to cash receipt extra goods and exposing expired products on the shelves. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the tricks and tricks of marketers with examples.

Meet, this is the usual "liter" package of milk:

Check for attentiveness: there are 900 grams. Nearby are several of 950. But the package can be perceived as a liter.
Physics knowledge test. Nearby lies a similar kefir. Volume is measured in milliliters, mass in grams. The density of kefir is tragically higher than the density of water. That is, 900 grams of kefir with 3.2% fat content is approximately 874.5 milliliters.

Second patient:

25 years warranty. Cool, right? There is one problem. You have to keep the check. Check, again, for knowledge of physics. Their check is printed on a regular cash register thermal tape(I checked on the spot). I have a lot of checks in my office. We photocopy them, because after a year or two they completely fade. The oldest check that a colleague saw was kept for 3 years in a folder in the archive. So how many years of warranty?

A warning
I must say right away that I do not sell any of these products, I am in no way associated with him or his competitors. I chose products from a similar class only because they were closer and more accessible on the shelf. Well, or attracted my attention more neighbors. On specific brands and articles, the color did not converge like a wedge - there are a lot of analogues. All judgments, in particular, regarding specific products and brands, are evaluative, I can mow down due to ignorance of the material part. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Below we will talk about my personal feelings and emotions. Everything, let's go.

"Now without asbestos"

Something extremely obvious can be indicated on the product that competitors forgot to write. Here is a cholesterol-free oil that exploits the buyer's biological illiteracy. And no nuclear waste. It is strange that this is not indicated on the label.

Checking for biochemistry: there simply cannot be cholesterol in vegetable oil. But you have to write. Remember the comic, right?

Another example is soy-free sausages. Very roughly speaking, if you do not make them from meat, then there are only two options left - soy texturate or fat emulsion. So, on those without texture, it is quite logical to write that they are without soy. The fact is that the buyer may decide that this statement is identical to the statement "from normal meat."

Mimicry
You can disguise yourself as a well-known class of goods. For example, there is margarine, and there is butter. It is enough to formalize margarine as butter and not write on it either the word "butter" or the word "margarine". Oppa, what is this?
First, evaluate the coloration. Straight poured oil, huh? Secondly, pay attention to the name - you will guess it only on the third attempt (it is on the price tag). The gender of the name is very important. Third, the price tag itself. Relatively recently, standards have changed, and the price tag was forced to indicate the type of product - in this case it is not oil, but a spread. But the law obliging to keep butter and margarine on different shelves somehow did not work out.

Here is another particular example of mimicry: a product of the store's own brand is shuffled into a pile of chocolates (if it were not a private label, it would be put separately).
Confectionery bar without adding cocoa in the shelf with chocolate on the left and right.

Read the ingredients carefully
Let's move on to nimble movements with the components. Caviar. The word "delicacy" does not oblige you to anything. Well, suddenly someone likes potatoes more than caviar, right? After all, there is still caviar inside. And the capelin on the lid was forgotten by accident, probably.

"Without preservatives" - but citric acid in the composition. The fact is that this thing is both a flavoring agent, and an acidity regulator, and a rather strong preservative. If it is included in the composition of the class of acidity regulators, then the preservatives magically disappear from the composition. Miracle!

I have always wondered to the point of madness who these young bulls are at such a price. Well, I found out.

It seems that "on the basis of" is "straight naturally from them." Of course, I'm not an expert, but judging by the components, there are few cones, but there is a well-known Sodium Laureth Sulfate and some elegantly named Aqua. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a strong cleaning agent, which, according to the wiki, can also be a strong allergen. And the final touch - it seems that vitamin B6 stimulates hair growth, and not the product itself - well, judging by the packaging. There is no need to prove this about vitamins. So what if the rest are not signed?

And here are the good old crab sticks. And although they are not from crab (which everyone seems to already know), the manufacturer still honestly warns on the packaging that they are from fish:

Names and terms
Now let's go buy some water. If you get into the classification, it turns out that we are primarily interested in the word “dining room” defined by the standard - this is the kind of water that can be consumed by a healthy person every day without restrictions. Please note that it is different from drinking. You can drink drinking water, and the dining room is a subset of drinking water, such drinking water that you can drink every day, and you will not get anything for it. Well, there is also a “healing-dining room”, which you can drink almost as often, if not a fan.
Dining room. Write from behind.

Another dining room. They also write from behind without unnecessary show-off (well, given the price, it’s quite understandable).

It’s also good, but it’s not worth living on it alone for a year in a row.

And this is a talent. The word "real" is not described in the standard, but it sounds cool.

Baby water? What it is? Is there educational water?

GOSTs and names
No examples were found during this detour. I remember that I came across beer with GOST for water purification on the label, plus sweets, where it was written in large letters " Natural products» on the front side. On the back it turned out that it was Natural Products LLC.
Reading under the stars
The girl drags me into the cosmetics to show something.
The correct reading is: "(Deep nutrition) and (moisturizing)". Humidification is very shallow. So, only the surface of the skin. But among target audience no programmers.

And I didn't even think about that. Let's do it again: they promise me a noticeable result in two weeks. How did they check? They washed their hair with this thing and, attention, focus, with another other thing. And these two things together had a noticeable result. Almost perfect logic.

Reading the footnotes was very interesting. Here is an example from the products:

Exploitation of laziness
Here is a perfect example of the aggressive exploitation of laziness. Packed expensive carrots are on top, but if you drop 5-6 packages, you can see the usual one. I knew what to look for, because I needed a couple of carrots, not just a pack.
As long as they do not poke loose carrots, I am only for packaged ones.

Photo of the offer of the terminal, I added an arrow to draw attention to one of the points. Did you top up your balance? Catch ads.

Prices
Three times I bought a product more expensive, because under it there was a price tag from another cheaper. Most a prime example- "confuse" the price tags for a large jar green peas and small. As part of the campaign, an example could not be found.
But here's a better option for you.
Fast feeding point. Look at the picture:

See the trick? There's a pancake, there's a pie... Everything's fine, right? But there is one caveat. Strain your eyes:

Over the century and a half of marketing history, many ways have been invented to lure your money into a trap. That is, to force you to buy something that you were not going to, and at exorbitant prices and, if possible, with damage to self-esteem. We decided to introduce you to the most virtuoso marketing techniques that have enriched their creators a hundredfold.

New!

The need to buy something new to replace the old is not always due to need. Yogurt really doesn’t get better with time, but three years ago tariff plan on the Internet is likely to be inferior to fresh. But let's take, for example, old cars: they have wheels, they drive, they ... But in fact, what else is needed? They are driving! Just like media centers play, clothing keeps out the cold, and refrigerators keep the emptiness you keep in there at the right temperature. And yet most people feel flawed using old technology. Who can be thanked for this? Meet Alfred P Sloan, the founder of Sloanism, a marketing strategy named after himself. Sloan was president of General Motors in the 1920s. Not to say that the affairs of the automaker were going badly: in America, he had only one serious competitor - Ford. Their struggle was not just competitive - it was a clash of worldviews, if not life philosophies. Judge for yourself. Ford in those years made the maximum profit on the same model T: the design, performance characteristics, even the color of the car did not change from year to year. When buying a Ford Model T, a person bought reliability and quality. What did Sloan do? He put forward a strategy of "superficial improvement". That is, every year he began to slightly change the design and performance characteristics of his cars and invest in the promotion of the "novelty". With the only goal, as he himself admitted, is “to create demand for new model and give rise to a certain degree of dissatisfaction with the old. Needless to say, the strategy, eventually called Sloanism, brought its creator some pretty good profits. According to some marketing historians today, Sloanism spawned everything: overconsumption (“If you’re so cool, why don’t you still have a quarile bath, but only a marble one?”), clubbing (“Join the world of respectable people, buy an Italian suit !”), the frustration of the poor (“If you don’t have five hundred dollar black glasses, how do you hope to meet a normal girl and get a job?”). The junk loan, the oversupply crisis, even the sellout phenomenon (when you can buy a thing for its real value instead of at a 300% markup) are all consequences of Sloanism. Alfred Pi, whatever that letter means, is long dead, but the world has to play by his rules. It’s not certain that we could have avoided the global crisis if Ford had pushed its marketing and consumption model with the same energy, but at least you would have experienced less frustration when you got into your 2009 Aston Martin. What do you mean - you have it in 2007? Come on, are you still driving like this?!

Nothing worse!

Perhaps the most cynical marketing strategy that you need to know in order to feel fooled more often (yes, the point of the whole article is to spoil your joy from habitual purchases) is "bait and switch", that is, "bait and substitution ". This technique is prohibited by law in many countries, for example in the UK, although even our kiosk women unconsciously use it. Imagine: you go to a tobacconist and ask for a blue LM, seeing it in the window. “Now I’ll look,” the window keeper says sympathetically and rummages under the counter for a long time. “No,” she finally says, handing you a red Marlboro. On the one hand, this is not what you wanted. On the other hand, you already have lung cancer anyway, and the person seems to have spent time on you ... A pack in the window? No, no, it's empty, "they just forgot to remove it." Read about the feeling of guilt in marketing in a separate paragraph “And are you not ashamed?”, We continue to consider the trick with bait and substitution. You already get the point. An advertisement or a shop window offers you one thing, but when you ask for it, the answer is the same: "Sorry, it's over, take another." Literally everyone uses the substitution. For example, clothing stores purposely sew or buy in the showroom one catchy item of an inconvenient size in order to put it in the window, and then sell something completely different to everyone who pecks at it. (By the way, it is this trick that marketing historians attribute the emergence of “bait and substitute” to - tailors resorted to it back in the 1920s.) Dating sites put on their banners photos of beauties who have never been registered there, or even create name of fake accounts, stimulating you to spend money with phrases like “Whoever didn’t send a flower, I don’t communicate with that.” And online hardware stores all the time stuff all models of popular brands into their catalogs, including archival ones and those that have never been delivered to our country. Remember how often you called such a store to hear: "There is no Intel SSD for 240 gigs, take OCZ for 120." This is a typical "bait and switch". At the same time, sellers do not always lie. Very often, the promotional offer is limited to a dozen copies of the coveted product, but this fact is carefully hidden. Recall, for example, the 2009 scandal that erupted in the blogosphere, when the M-video store announced that it would sell iPhones half the average market price - for 9,990 rubles. Indeed, in each store there were a dozen devices for this money. But they either quickly dispersed, or were bought by the employees themselves in the first five minutes after midnight, as evidenced by the checks obtained by bloggers. However, the ads that lured hundreds of people into the stores as part of the action were broadcast for weeks. Do I need to tell you what the M-video salespeople said in response to a question about the iPhone? "Sorry..." - and further along the knurled.

Buy more!

If we correctly imagine a typical MAXIM reader, then you should have a TV at home, or at least a bathroom. And if so, you run the risk of becoming the target of an attack of Alka-Seltzer marketing. To the credit of the company of the same name, which every day saves you from a hangover, you should note that it was not they who came up with this technique: in a sense, Alka-Seltzer herself became a victim, although she made money on it. The essence of such marketing is very simple: the faster a person spends a product, the sooner he runs to buy a new one. Have you ever seen an advertisement for chewing gum with two pillows falling out of the pack? One pillow gives the same subjective feeling of freshness, but "they showed on TV that you need to take two." Chocolate in advertising is broken off immediately in rows, not slices. Toothpaste is squeezed out over the entire length of the brush, and even with a curl at the end, although a sausage 4-5 mm long is enough for cleaning. Yes, there are advertisements! Have you ever read the shampoo manual? "Apply, massage, rinse, repeat if necessary." The indicator strips on razor cartridges fade before they need to be replaced. And take commercial drugs based on paracetamol, such as solpadeine. One pill is usually enough for you. But no, advertising, instructions, and even the packaging itself (tablets are packed in strips in pairs) encourage you to drink two. Take more! Change more often! And above all this bacchanalia of excess consumption looms the genius of Jack Tinker, the owner of Tinker & Associates. It was it that back in 1950 was responsible for advertising campaign alka-seltzer. In the video “Alka-Seltzer with ice” (you can watch it at goo.gl/G8YDT), a cocktail was made from the medicine: ice, pills, lemon. One tablet looked scanty, so it was decided to take two. "This is not dangerous?" honest creatives asked therapist Dorothy Carter. "Yeah, it's aspirin! she replied. "It's hard to get over him." That's what they decided on. The Tinker & Partners agency made dozens of videos with two pills and came up with a fun song with the refrain: “Slap, slap, shhhhhh.” All this, coupled with a change in packaging, made it possible to increase sales of the anti-hangover remedy. Alka-Seltzer's success ushered in a new marketing model that the textbooks dubbed after the company. In addition to buyers, who are now forced to purchase not enough shampoo and chocolate, but the recommended one, the Alka-Seltzer mascot, the red baby doll Speedy, became a victim of the model. He was clutching only one pill in his hands, so in the 50s he was sent to rest.

Cartridge included!

The business model, acquaintance with which (well, as an acquaintance - they read the article on Wikipedia) in many ways made us take up the pen (well, like a pen - the keyboard), is called “bait and hook”, which means “bait and hook”. Historians do not have a single version of who introduced it first, but she gained her fame thanks to King K. Gillett, the inventor of the safety razor. The essence of the model is that you sell the basic item at a discount, sometimes at a loss to yourself, and make the main profit on consumables that your client is forced to or gets used to buying. The most common example of bait and a hook is a razor and blades. When Gillette (the founder of guess what company) started selling his razors, the machine was quite expensive, because it was a thing, and the blades were junk. But the trouble is that the inventor did not protect his offspring with "long" patents. After a few years of trading, he faced the wildest competition: a razor with a removable head was copied by everyone who was not lazy. Forced to lower the price of machine tools, poor King found that this decision not only did not put him on the brink of ruin, but also exploded the market. The more cheap machines he sold, the more blades his new customers bought. He also reduced the price of the machine and raised it to the blades - the volumes only increased! Thus began the triumphal procession of "bait and hook" through the offices of marketers. And today - look back! - PlayStation 3 console with stuffing, like good computer, costs 350 dollars. Is it because Sony is one of the creators and producers of Blu-ray discs, on which all the major hits are released, which, due to freaky graphics, do not fit on a regular DVD? And look at printers: how can a home photo studio cost as much as a photo soap dish? Where are manufacturers looking? Wherever... On the lively numbers of sales of cartridges. Since there is only enough ink in the starter kit for a dozen color pages, sooner or later a person will have to buy a new one. The list of examples can be continued for a long time: a free iTunes player and an expensive iTunes Store, a cooler and water for it, a coffee machine and capsules ... We got off the same hooks - for example, from the same blades or zone protection for DVDs - thanks to the development of technology and the emergence of media centers and electric razors, others are just getting ready to swallow. By the way, an alternative version of the appearance of the business model sounds like this: when the famous Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, was looking for an opportunity to sell kerosene to the Chinese, he loaded them - either at a bargain price, or completely free of charge - eight million lamps that worked only on kerosene. Today, they say, gas is supplied to social housing for the same reasons, not electricity ... Yes, the list of examples is long.

Take it for free!

Not all marketing tricks are rooted in the distant past. For example, freemium is an invention of the last decades. The elegant term was born from the addition of two words: "free" (English "free") and "premium" - and refers to a business model in which the company takes money only from those who want to get additional functionality. The base product is distributed free of charge. You probably guessed why freemium was unheard of until recently: it was simply unprofitable to give away full-fledged goods in an era of high production costs. The company had to pay both for the workshop, and for the rental of the warehouse, and for the priority display of goods in the store. Yes, you can give ten bars of soap to ten people, but what is the guarantee that at least one of them will come back and buy more? But he will have to buy a box already in order to recoup your costs. For a long time, the only form of freemium was samplers: small soaps, perfumes, tasting pieces of sausage (see more in the paragraph “Aren't you ashamed?”). But in the era of Internet and IT business, the costs are minimal, and it became possible to give you a whole product. Is the company releasing the game? It doesn't cost anything to make a lite version of it! You cut the number of missions, limit the paladin's level, give the player ten thousand chips "for the first time." If you want more, pay. Or, let's say, here's a great software for screwing movie titles. It works for free, but only for a month. If you want more, pay. Ten userpics for free, thirty - for money. Do you want your profile on a dating site to be displayed in a golden frame at the top of the search? Pla… well, you get the idea. The cynicism of freemium is that the product is made once, and for a penny by some Indians, and then you can endlessly distribute free copies of it. For a hundred freeloaders there is one person with money - he will feed the entire chain. The same (about zero) money is spent on maintaining a premium profile or account as on freebies ... The first sprouts of freemium appeared back in the mid-80s, when game manufacturers began to put lite versions of some games into boxes with others. But the term itself was put forward by Jared Lukin from the IT company Alacra only in 2006. Since then, several books have been written about freemium, even its classification has appeared. Chris Anderson, the chief theorist and ideologue of the Internet economy, believes that the most cynical form of freemium is the crippleware. You download some program to your iPhone or Android phone, and it is good and free for everyone, but here are the banners ... Or a delay in downloading. Or the inability to play music in the background. But - a miracle! Annoying restrictions can be removed! How? You probably already guessed it: pay.

For only 999.9!

It is not clear why such an unpleasant business model was named after a noble wooden animal, but the fact remains: we will talk about “selling a Trojan horse.” When using a horse, businessmen do not set any lofty goals, such as saving Princess Elena or revenge for the murdered Patroclus. The point is, as usual, to lure you out of more money, and so brazenly and shamelessly that the model in a number of countries is equated with fraud and is prohibited by law. Its essence is that you buy a thing, not knowing that it contains "the threat of inevitable additional spending." It's easier to explain with an example. An advertising poster screams at you across the street: “A loan for a million rubles for 15,000 a month!” And only when you come closer, or even find yourself in a bank branch, you will find out that the payment is valid only when taking a loan for a period of 10 years, and even with an imposed life insurance contract. Is the bank on deposit? No. Moreover, he makes money on you. Or, say, the iPhone: in the States it sells for $199 (the 3Gs model costs $49). And if it seems to you that this is some kind of miracle or grimace of victorious capitalism, then no. It's just that the device comes with an indissoluble contract with such communication prices that allow the companies involved in the deal to easily cover the difference between the real price and 199 dollars. Trojan marketing sometimes goes hand in hand with freemium, giving rise to free in fee out hybrids. This is when a product is imposed on you for free, say, access to an allegedly free download of files, and only then you find out that by clicking on the “Accept” button, you agreed to pay $ 10 per month after the free trial period expired. Unsubscribing from the account costs ten again. But why go far for examples? Almost any sentence in fine print (“Air ticket for 1,000 rubles!” Further small: “Not including airport taxes”) can be a Trojan horse. In addition, collect thirty caps (and get trash), gift cards and promotional coupons sometimes fall under this model. If you were given a piece of paper with a face value of 500 rubles, which you can spend if you buy for 3000, this means that you spent 2500, and did not earn 500 rubles. Chris Anderson, already quoted by us, says that even a seemingly harmless thing “without notes” can turn out to be “Trojan”. Why do vacuum cleaners break so quickly these days and laptops are made from cheap plastic instead of slightly more expensive aluminum? This question Anderson leaves unanswered, but recalls that the term “Trojan horse business” appeared after a Vermont power tool manufacturer was tried in the early 2000s for deliberately selling equipment with a predetermined defect. His drills and grinders broke exactly one year later, after the warranty expired. Who knows if some other commodity producers are following his path?

And not ashamed?

According to the scientific publication Journal of Consumer Marketing (are you kidding me? what can I translate, all the words are Russian!), one of the main tools of cynical marketing is guilt. Even we in this article have already mentioned him twice in connection with various tricks. How it works?

Financial aspect

Marketing psychologists Burnett and Lunsford say directly in their work that a person almost always feels uncomfortable when he gets something for free. Hence the success of freemium, free samples and tastings in the supermarket. Giving you something for free, the manufacturer, on the one hand, makes you obligated (“I give you three ready-made dumplings, and what are you to me?”), On the other hand, it infringes on your pride (“You have so much money! Why are you content with crumbs, like a beggar? Can't buy the full version?"). Any advertising built on the message “You deserve it” should be attributed to the same exploitation of guilt. By the way, Benjamin Babbit, a soap manufacturer, was the first to understand this back in the 19th century. Among other marketing techniques, he invented samplers, giving away substandard pieces of his products for free. Few people left his store, taking only a remnant of soap.

Reputational aspect

You can feel guilty about your actions in different ways. Coming to the supermarket and not participating in the distribution of bouillon cubes, you seem to be immune from the guilt from the previous paragraph. But you can still destroy a battery of boxes by reaching for the squid curds on the top shelf. This is also a trick to make you feel guilty and even ashamed ("Oh, how embarrassing, they'll put it back later! I'll buy something"). It is difficult to return clothes after fitting or a car after a test drive because of the same reputational guilt: what if the store thinks that you just scoffed, that you have no money, that you are not cool?

Moral aspect

How can you buy yourself a second shoe when there are 80,000 orphans in the country? Stop eating all sorts of nasty things, don't you really care about your health, come to our restaurant! Save the mink, buy a nutria hat! A sense of responsibility for distant problems breeds guilt with an almost 100% guarantee. Basically, this blame is caused charity organisations, and in their case it is at least somehow understandable: in fact, you won’t lose anything, and someone in Africa can eat on this money all day. But when it comes to responsibility for one's health, deforestation, or the future of a child (which, in a commercial, strangely depends on a bottle of sweetened yogurt), do not rush to be deceived. The seller is more likely to care about the sale of eco-tomatoes than about the state of your intestinal microflora.