Assortment of Endorsement

An endorser is defined as someone or something giving their public approval or support to someone or something. Who or what you have linked to your brand can greatly influence how consumers perceive your company.  An endorser could range anywhere from a famous NBA star, to a cartoon character. Each company is striving for different goals, and the endorser they choose should align with these goals.  There are pros and cons to each alternative, but deciding which is most appropriate for is an important job of marketers. 

• Celebrity:  On the positive, celebrities come with a very high level of recognition, helps to personify your brand, builds trust and emotional connection.  On the negative, celebrities can be very expensive and they can make public mistakes that reflect poorly on your brand.

• Fictional Character:  On the positive, they make no public mistakes, they are personalized to your brand, and they are economical.  On the negative, they don’t ad much credibility and they have no existing fan base.

• “Average Joe” Past User: On the positive, they are inexpensive and add a personal connection because its someone consumers can relate to.  On the negative, many question their motives and credibility, and do not stand out like celebrities do. 

• Company Employee: On the positive, it is very cost-effective and makes a company seem more “human” and relatable. On the negative, a CEO will not turn as many heads as a celebrity, and consumer may be skeptical of the employees being biased.

• Professional Expert: On the positive, this can add credibility and increase trust of the product. Also, professional experts are much less likely to cause many public incidents like celebrities can.  On the negative, they can be moderately costly (depending on the expert) and again, not as interesting as a celebrity or model.

Whichever endorser path you choose, there will be advantages and disadvantages.  Remember, endorsers are a direct reflection on your company or brand.

The 5 Senses Through Marketers' Lenses

Sensory Marketing is defined as marketing that engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior.  By simply manipulating a few sensory factors, certain beliefs, feelings, thoughts and opinions can change in a consumer’s mind. 

Sight: Sight is the most popular sense to use when marketing.  Visuals allow us to judge the products or services quality level or over "theme". These influencing visuals can range from a color pallet, font type, or store layout.  For example, the difference in the packaging for Double Stuf Oreos vs. Oreo Thins. Double Stuff Oreos use Bold Font with the heavy cookies placed towards the bottom of the package (creating a heavier feel/contains more calories).  In contrast, the Oreo Thins use lighter shades and the thin cookies are almost floating (which creates a lighter feel/contains few calories).

Sound: What a consumer hears effects their mood.  Just as in a Jaws movie, we know a shark is right around the corner once the scary music starts. For a marketing example, when consumers are shopping in a Von Maur department store, there is many times a piano player playing classical music.  A shopper might suddenly feel sophisticated,  therefore feel that they can afford that exquisite dress they might usually consider out of their price range.

Smell: Smell is many times used to evoke memories and past experiences.  For this reason, marketers use it to create remembrance of a brand and to trigger emotion.  For example, Mrs. Field’s Cookies stores are located in malls all over the U.S.  They are constantly baking cookies that disperse an irresistible smell that remind many of us of past times.  Perhaps, the smell reminds us of when we’re young and our grandma is teaching us her secret chocolate chip cookie recipe. For that reason, we may be more inclined to purchase a delicious warm cookie. 

Taste: Although taste is a sense that is more limited than the other 4 senses, it still plays an important role in marketing, specifically with food and beverage companies.  Grocery stores can offer free samples to engage and persuade consumers into buying the full offering of a product. Taste impacts how you are feeling.  For example, at Tiffany’s, shoppers are greeted with a glass of champagne to elevate the already elegant shopping experience.

Touch: A sense of touch is vital to consumers. We judge quality of apparel and the freshness of food after we’ve touched the product.  Many consumers have a high need-for-touch (NFT) when assessing products.  The NFT scale was designed to measure individual differences in preference for haptic (touch) information.  For this reason, many online sellers struggle with those that rate high on this scale.  For example, when mattress stores allow customers to come into their show-rooms and touch, sit on, and lay on their mattresses, they are more likely to have customers who are confident with their purchase decisions because they "felt what they are getting". 

When done correctly, companies that create a multisensory brand experience increase the perceived value, and increase the likelihood of consumers positively remembering the product or service.  Senses can create for an unforgettable shopping experience.

It's Divine Because its Mine

Picture this: you have your favorite pair of jeans that fit you just perfectly.  Would you be willing to trade them for something of equal market value?  The answer is probably no.  The Endowment Effect is the idea that we tend to value things more highly when we own them.  If we have to sell our items, we want more for them than they are really worth.  A study was conducted at the University of California-Berkeley that tested the Endowment Effect on people using coffee mugs.  It found that students who had won free coffee mugs valued the mugs at $10. Those who had not won mugs would pay $5 for one.  Therefore, the value of the mugs doubled for those who owned a mug.  A study was conducted at Yale that sought out to find if the Endowment Effect existed in a real market.  It found that when bargaining over a trade-in vehicle, a consumer was superior if he or she owned the vehicle for a longer time.  Thus, this proved that the endowment effect did exist in the marketplace, leaving the door wide open for marketers.  There are a few ways marketers can use this effect to their advantage:

• Use vivid imagery: if the consumers can picture themselves using something, they almost feel they already own it.
• Allow for trial: this could range from a test drive, to an in-store display, or a free two-week trial.  When the customer can be hands-on a use the product, they gain a sense of ownership.
• Post-purchase Consumer Involvement: Encourage consumers to write reviews on your product or service or contribute their recommendations through social media.  This will make your customers feel satisfied with their purchase decision, and increase their sense of ownership.

Overall, the Endowment Effect is a power influencer of buyer behavior, and poses another great opportunity for marketers. 

Sales Conversion from Loss Aversion

You just spent a great long-weekend in Las Vegas with your friends.  You went to fabulous restaurants, went shopping, and of course did some gambling at the casinos.  If someone on the street gave you the choice between $50, no strings attached, vs. flipping a coin for the chance of winning $100, what option would you choose?  In spite of both options being numerically the same, most people would choose the $50.  This is an example of the phenomenon of loss aversion.

Loss aversion is defined as people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains.  A study conducted by Daniel Kahneman found that the statement “if you buy our product, you will save $100 per year” is half as powerful than the statement “if you do not buy our product, you will lose $100 per year”.

Most studies have found similar results, that losses are twice as powerful mentally as gains.  This opens the door for opportunities to marketers.  They can express an outcome is a loss frame instead of a gain frame.  Some examples include:

• Free trail:  once you’re used to a product or service you grow accustomed to the luxury of it. The likelihood of you sending it back, which could be a hassle, is slim. An example is a free month trial of a Shark vacuum.
• Wording: Instead of emphasizing what a consumer will gain from an offering, emphasize what they’ll be missing out on if they do not purchase an offering.  For instance, The General’s commercial “Don’t overpay for auto insurance!”
• Luring them back: If your local Yogurtology has a punch card where you get the 6^th yogurt free, you’re more inclined to return to Yogurtology.  Why would you pass up something “free”?

It is human psychological nature.  Once we have something, we surely do not want to surrender it.

The Power of Priming

We’ve all fallen victim to it.  A McDonald’s commercial comes on and the juicy cheeseburger and crispy golden fries that appear on the screen before us has us in a trance.  We make a late night run to go get that Big Mac we’re now craving.

An experiment conducted in 2009 at Yale University was performed in order to see if exposure to food advertising during television viewing might contribute to automatic snacking of food.  This was done specifically on elementary-school-aged children.  The children watched a cartoon that contained either food advertising or advertising for other products and received a snack while watching, and the results were staggering.  Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising.  It’s no wonder that American scientists have found that obesity in children increases the more hours they watch television.  In 2012, $4.6 billion was spent to advertise fast food. This speaks volumes on how influential priming in marketing can be.  

Priming is when exposure to one stimulus can affect how you respond to another stimulus. Priming can be used in all sorts of ways.  It can range from a type of music played in a clothing store to the type of font on a sign.  With the power of priming, markers can influence your subconscious and change your perception without you even knowing it.