You're Selling to Feelings, Not Reason
- Short Summary: Consumers don't buy based entirely on facts - emotions play a much larger role. Make sure you are merchandising and marketing to the feelings du jour.
We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but when it comes to buying, we're just not (oh - and wait until I address reason versus emotions in business decision-making, though that's another article entirely).
Consumers - female and male - buy based on emotion. No matter how many statistics and facts they line up on the way to making a buying decision, that data collection effort tends to be done in the service of making the decision they want to make.
But you already know that trust and connection are essential to closing sales. Now make sure that you are also speaking to emotions from the beginning of the process - including the merchandise you choose to offer and the messages you convey to browsers and shoppers - long before the customer lands in the store or the products land in the cart. Be sure you are selling to feelings.
In this month's article for InStore Magazine, I wrote about how the anxiety and disruption of 2020 will influence the shopping emotions of 2021. Read the article to see how the themes of comfort, tradition, and responsibility are the themes to merchandise and market to in the year to come.