Would you say you were more of a loner or more a herd-minded creature? A bear or a sheep, that’s the question?  (The other question could be, “What the heck’s this got to do with consumer behaviour or marketing?” Hold on, I’m getting there, I promise.)

Most of us like to focus more on our individuality when we answer this question, but if you look at the way we live there’s as much commonality about what each of us does as there is with sheep. OK, so the range of activities is smaller, but if you drew up a list of the things we do, places we go, even the times of day that we do them, you’ll see that everyone starts to look fairly similar.

So whilst we cling to the illusion that it’s just them and not us that’s part of the herd, what can we learn about why people buy from this realisation? How do you get sheepish consumers to buy?

The first step is to understand why we are sheep-like (you notice I’m including you anyway now). One of the ways we figure out who it’s safe to be around – an important survival mechanism for our relatively un-evolved caveman brains – is by seeing who is most like us. Our closest friends are likely to be the people who share most of our views on things. Identifying them enables us to turn our backs on them from time to time without getting bumped on the head with a rock. If we leave our children in their care we can believe there’s a chance they won’t have been eaten when we get back. Why? Because they’re like us and we’re fairly sure we wouldn’t eat a child.

When it comes to shopping, consumers are massively influenced by seeing other people buy things. Clever manufacturers capitalise on this by making sure that their products are as visible as possible. The genius of the iPod wasn’t just its stylish design. It certainly wasn’t its technical features either (other competing products offered the same or arguably better options at the time). The real genius was how visible Apple made it. White is a fairly impractical colour for in-ear headphones; never mind the marks on the cable, the ear wax is going to really show up (euggghh). But how else is a slim, pocket-concealed device going to get noticed?

It’s in the interest of our unconscious mind to pick up on what other people are doing because it shows us what’s safe. If you’ve watched ten people eat a berry from the bush with the enormous prickles and not collapse to the floor clutching their throat or stomach, you’ve got a new food you can probably eat safely. The mechanism that helped our ancestors survive and prosper still exists in our unconscious, but now that we don’t have to forage for food it helps reassure us that buying something in a shop is OK in just the same way. Going back to our example, after you’ve seen enough of them an Apple iPod feels like a safer product for a consumer buy.

The extent to which we’re influenced by what we see others do has been extensively tested by psychologists. In one experiment they put people into a room that they then started to blow smoke into. For the most part people on their own sensibly went to report it, but when people were planted to not react to the apparent emergency more often than not the ones not in on what was happening didn’t either. In another, when someone was heard to fall off a ladder nearby 70% of individuals went to help, but when a couple of people were added who seemed unconcerned just 7% felt a need to go the person’s aid.

If you want to get someone to look at a point on the ceiling – come on, admit it, it’s the sort of power you dream of having – all you need to do is get a few people to stand and look at it; your target will be unable to resist a glance in the same direction. Don’t stare without your helpers though; people will just think you’re losing your marbles.

An intriguing aspect of our willingness to follow the flock is that we don’t actually need to see the flock ourselves: it’s enough for someone to tell us what a flock is doing. Psychologists looking at how people react to signs requesting that hotel guests use their towels for more than one day found that far more people did so when the message explained that most of the people who’d used the room had reused their towels. This is one of the reasons testimonials are so powerful on internet sites; would-be customers can hear from other ‘sheeple’ like them how great your product is.

Another way of giving this reassurance is to let prospective customers know that a suitably impressive number of other people like them have decided to buy your wares. A bear doesn’t much care what another has done, but a sheep most certainly does.

For more details of the research cited in this article see:
Latane, Bibb; Darley, John M. Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1968 Nov Vol 10(3) 215-221.
Latane, B., & Darley, J. Bystander “Apathy”, American Scientist, 1969, 57, 244-268.
Goldstein, J. Martin, S. Cialdini, R. Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion (2007)

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