Fritz Bachen – The Consumer Psychologist

WHY PEOPLE BUY, WHAT THEY BUY

Adnews Article: Jan 2011. The need to rationalise our behaviour

Opinion

So here’s something we all need reminding of, ‘nobody wants to see themselves as a monster’. This was never made more clear to me than interviewing sex offenders for court in a previous occupation. Sex offenders do not want to see themselves in a bad light and will therefore distort their own cognitions to make sense of their abhorrent behaviour. “I loved that child, it was important she learned about sex from me, and not someone out there’ was typical response to the ‘why did you do it line of questioning.

The reason their responses were so earnest, and their defence of their behaviour so steadfast was because it was important to them, that they didn’t loose face to themselves. They saw themselves as good people, and to face the fact their behaviour was so harmful to others would be extremely confronting (it’s also why so many offenders seem so convincing when protesting their innocence on TV).

So why talk about these sex offenders and their distorted cognitions? Because we all do it. We need to. Humans have a natural desire to keep their thoughts, their feelings and their behaviours aligned. We need to be able to see ourselves as ‘rational’ people, and be able to make sense of our own behaviour. For example, if you go to the pub and drink a beer someone may ask ‘Why are you drinking that beer? You cannot (and will not) say ‘Because I loved the advertising’. This will paint a picture of yourself (to yourself) as a feeble minded human, susceptible to advertising. You will need to defend your behaviour in a way that makes sense to yourself (and if they ask others too.) Beer marketers call this ‘the barroom defence’; it’s just about my favourite expression in marketing.

If you don’t have a barroom defence (or the equivalent for your category – no matter what your category) you’ll be at risk of doing donut advertising. Woolly overly emotive imagery that doesn’t give consumers a concrete reason to justify their purchase. I’m surprised by how much advertising (mainly that advertising yearning to seek an emotional connection) fails to fill this fundamental objective, give people a reason to purchase. It may not be why they purchase it, but without a reason they wont be able to justify the purchase and therefore wont purchase at all. Get me?

We all need to justify our behaviour and have a ‘because’ ready in our heads somewhere, something that makes sense of our own behaviour. Something we can latch on to so we can justify why we are doing the things we do. There are a number of things I learned whilst working in prison. This year I’ll drag up a few other parallels between forensic and consumer psychology

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