Despite what consumer research would have us believe, people are very bad at working out why they’ve really done something.

To be fair we are all taken in by the vain illusion that we are in conscious control of pretty much everything we do.

But it is just an illusion.

When you’re marketing a product it’s easy to focus on the rational features and benefits, when in fact what’s going on around the edges may have just as much to do with whether or not a customer buys from you.

It’s often all about emotion.

Don’t you hate it when someone you know, who’s had a bad day, takes it out on you? You make an innocent remark and all of a sudden you find you’re being yelled at for no reason. You’re pretty sure that had you said the same thing on another day it would not have led to the same reaction.

This type of misattribution of emotions is surprisingly common. And if you’re honest with yourself you probably don’t have to think back too far to remember one of those bad days when nothing seemed to go quite right.

(I only have to think back to yesterday, but that’s another story).

But enough of the doom and gloom, the good news is that there is a positive flip side to this emotional coin. I hope that’s cheered you up a bit.

And to cheer you up a bit more, if you can tap into this aspect of your consumers’ unconscious minds, you will sell more.

In one of the studies they asked people to recall a particular experience that the researchers knew would trigger a particular emotion (the birth of a child for happiness, the death of a loved one for sadness, or an encounter with an awkward neighbour for anger).

Next they asked a number of questions about the people the participants worked with. How likely would he or she be to complete a task they asked him to do? How accurately would he or she represent their view to somebody else? And so on.

Happy people were significantly more trusting and positive. For the record, angry people were the least trusting, sad somewhere between the two.

Perhaps because this research feels intuitively obvious, it’s easy to overlook the most significant part (so I’ll mention it again just in case): where people feel happy about one thing that they are inclined to be much more trusting.

Trust is such a huge issue for consumers (particularly at an unconscious level).

One of the reasons that big brands do so well is that customers feel safe buying products from brands they have seen frequently and experienced without coming to harm often.

It all links back to our distant past. Our unconscious is designed first and foremost to keep us safe.

Small brands and newer companies have to work much harder to reassure people who are thinking of buying from them. But all that reassurance and justification of your product or service can make the shopping experience less fun.

This research shows it’s vital to stand back from what you’re doing and see if you can create some happiness around the experience.  And the key word is “around”.

Just as good, if you can catch customers when they are in a good mood you will sell more.

Oh yes, why did I say “It’s a secret” in the title?

Well, the same researchers found that when people were aware that a happy memory or funny film could influence their emotions, their trust levels were unchanged subsequently.

If you can create an environment where customers are happy, they’ll be far more likely to buy.

For more details of the research cited in this article see:
Schweitzer and Dunn; “Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88(6), 736-748 (2005).

Image courtesy: Raymond Larose