Click left.
And there you are, now you just have to wait for the item you ordered to arrive. In a week to 10 days, you’ll carefully slice open a box or bag, you’ll reach inside and pull out the thing you asked for only a few minutes ago. You clicked left.
Now read the new book “Influenced: The Science of Why We Buy” by Aarron Atkinson-Toal, and find out why you were compelled to own that thing you didn’t need.
In 1997, “long before the invention of online grocery shopping,” Atkinson-Toal’s little brother was diagnosed with a disease that required careful mealtimes. His family learned to read food labels – and they learned that labels are sometimes misleading.
The “conclusion,” Atkinson-Toal determined then as a teenager and later, as a marketing researcher, is that many times, “you’re under the influence [of marketing], and you don’t even know it.”
While bartering was surely around back in the Stone Age, formal exchanges are only about 5,000 years old. You can draw a line through colonial expansion, the Industrial Revolution, and electronic media to see how products and money exchanged hands throughout history but when marketing took that most recent step, things changed rapidly.
From an evolutionary standpoint, food was suddenly easy to get. Neurologically, jingles stuck in consumers’ heads. Brands were created, along with mascots. It was quick and easy to be influenced by those things, and boom! “rational choice” is lost to marketers’ efforts.
Marketers today have ways to keep you returning to shop. Apps and loyalty cards track your purchases (and more!), and BOGOs and “deals” can destroy good intentions. Your brain doesn’t help any; it’s hijacked by “unconscious mental shortcuts to overcome… overload, called ‘heuristics’” that can further skew your thinking.
Says Atkinson-Toal, “Becoming an uninfluenced shopper means kick-starting the conscious mind into action.” You can “Take control of how you buy. Understand the science of why you buy.”
Your closet is full. You’ve got a pile of broken-down shipping boxes in the recycling bin. Your credit card is, well, you don’t wanna know. But you can’t look away, and “Influenced” can help you understand.
For the most part, you can blame it on your brain, says author Aarron Atkinson-Toal, but not entirely. You’re being played, as he shows, and there are ways to beat the brands. You just have to understand all the insidious ways that labels, advertising, pop-ups, smells, and sights can overcome your subconscious to make you buy, buy, baby.
Nobody said it would be easy, least of all Atkinson-Toal.
And yet, learning more about the things you purchase and the jingles you love is fun, which makes this useful, informative book plain enjoyable. Just know that the word “science” in the subtitle is appropriate
With electronic pricing in the news lately, and the cost of items on the rise, you owe it to yourself to understand how marketers gotcha. If you’re one of those marketers or a businessperson, you’ll especially find this book fascinating. For you, “Influenced” just clicks right.
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s reviews of business books are read in more than 260 publications in the U.S. and Canada.