With a limited budget, how can we make the product spread itself?

Here's a question for you: what's your underlying motivation for buying a Harley? Is it its practicality? Probably not, since you can get a more practical motorcycle for half the price.

In fact, the reason you buy a Harley instead of a Honda supercub is often because your choice is influenced by your reference group.

Yes, people who buy Harleys often don't buy them because they are practical, unique, or high-end. Rather, a Harley motorcycle can serve as a certificate for joining the Harley family (such as a club). (Here, the members of a club are the reference group)

Then let’s think about another question. If we buy a water heater, will we make the purchasing decision based on a certain group or a few people? It seems not. When buying a water heater, we often make the decision ourselves without consulting the outside world.

Why are some products affected by reference groups while others are not obviously so?

In fact, whether consumers’ purchases are influenced by reference groups depends mainly on two factors of the product: visibility and practicality .

The degree of influence of the reference group will vary depending on the strength of visibility and practicality.

A picture explains:

• Public utility items that are “highly visible and relatively practical”: for example, laptops, mobile phones, and leather shoes;
• Public non-practical items that are “highly visible but not very practical”: for example, LV bags and Tiffany bracelets;
• "Weakly visible but relatively practical" personal utility category : such as water heaters, mattresses, and wireless routers;
• Private non-practical categories with “weak visibility and not very practical”: amulets, taking some time (flower e-commerce ).

A large number of studies have found that the more visible and less practical a product is, the more consumers are influenced by the reference group, which means that imitation behavior is very likely to occur.

ps: Reference groups do not have an impact on all products. For products with light and easy decision-making (such as shampoo), reference groups are often ineffective.

Why is it that the greater the degree of visibility, the greater the influence of the reference group? This is because if the product purchased by consumers has a high degree of visibility, it is easy for others to notice it, so they will often refer to other people's opinions or choices before buying.

For example, a large number of people buy a certain brand of car , often not because of the car manufacturer's marketing activities (such as advertisements on CCTV), but because someone bought it and someone else bought it.

Studies have shown that nearly one in eight car sales are due to this social influence. When the product is highly visible, social influence will have a greater effect on people's purchasing behavior.

Why is the influence of the reference group greater the weaker the utility? Here, products with weak practicality are mostly luxury goods, fashion items, etc. Therefore, due to different incomes of consumers, the taste and price of these products vary from person to person. Reference groups can help with purchasing decisions. In contrast, for necessities with strong practicality, the differences between the products themselves are very small, and the choices of the public are relatively similar. Therefore, it is not meaningful to refer to other people.

For example, when white-collar worker Xiao Wang decides which luxury brand bag to buy, the one her colleagues (reference group) are using will influence her choice to a certain extent. However, when it comes to which water heater to buy, you are less likely to be influenced by others and often decide for yourself.

From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, our willingness to imitate reference groups is due to a special neuron in our brain - the mirror neuron, which gives us an innate urge to imitate the outside world.

When the reference group is our desired group (a group we don’t belong to but like very much, or even want to get close to or integrate into), the imitation behavior is triggered more strongly (such as people who want to integrate into the Harley circle).

The example of French agronomists promoting potatoes across the country is a classic. The famine in Germany at that time was very serious, resulting in low grain crop yields. In response to the disaster, local agronomists were commissioned by the king to promote the cultivation of a high-yield crop (potatoes) introduced from abroad in Germany.

This high-quality crop should have been popular, but no one expected that when potatoes were first promoted, they would encounter large-scale boycotts from the public. When most farmers first encountered potatoes, they simply did not believe that the crop could be food; some even complained that potatoes were like poisonous apples.

The agronomists were smart and they tried another approach. They suggested that the king issue a new measure - "the country introduces a new crop, and non-nobles are not allowed to plant it" and send soldiers to strictly guard the royal potato plantations.

At this time, the farmers became curious. What kind of crop was so precious that farmers were not allowed to plant it? Everyone wants to ask clearly. So the king ordered the soldiers to deliberately relax their vigilance to allow the farmers to run to the plantations. As you can imagine, the potato spread throughout the country. Later, the king took the opportunity to cancel the rule that "non-nobles are not allowed to grow potatoes". As expected, potatoes, which were originally difficult to promote, were rushed into planting by farmers. The problem of promotion difficulty is easily solved.

In this case, then, the nobles, who had the privilege of growing potatoes, were the desired group of peasants. They can make farmers follow and even imitate them willingly.

This is why crazy fans are so devoted to their idols and even imitate their outfits, movements and expressions. This is also because celebrities (a reference group) are a desired group for ordinary people that they do not belong to but want to get close to urgently.

The reason why the peasants were able to imitate the nobles (desire for the group) was because the king deliberately increased the peasants' visibility to the nobles (seeing the nobles planting potatoes), which created conditions for imitation. This made something that was originally only related to the nobility (planting potatoes) become completely public (the news spread throughout the country) because of the added visibility (allowing the peasants to peek).

This is the power of visualization. When you label private behavior with a public signal, you transform an unobservable behavior into something more observable and create a basis for imitation.

For example, common tickets are mostly a piece of paper, which people often put in their pockets, while some minor league teams in the United States use button tickets. Here, buttons, as a decoration, are hung on the clothes of the audience, adding visibility, allowing them to be spread free among the audience and even to the organizers after the audience leaves, which then triggers social imitation.

In fact, if we are not careful, the social imitation caused by visualization can also have adverse effects.

I have often doubted the effectiveness of this type of wildlife protection advertising.

Originally we only knew that we shouldn't buy ivory, but the fact that "25,000 African elephants are poached every year due to human demand for ivory" in the article has provided visibility for us.

Visibility creates conditions for imitation. Many people who originally had no idea about ivory may try to buy ivory after watching this public service advertisement.

This is like a situational public service advertisement aimed at teenagers with the theme of "How to Say No to Smoking". It is very likely that it will not have a restraining effect on teenagers' first smoking. On the contrary, it may increase teenagers' smoking behavior because of the visibility created by the advertisement.

At this point, someone should ask, you have talked so much about the importance of visibility, why didn’t you mention practicality?

In fact, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, practicality is also a very important influencing factor. The reason why it is not mentioned is that compared to visibility, the practicality of a product is often fixed and difficult to change (for example, a water heater must have strong practicality, which is determined by the product and is difficult to change). Besides, it is not worthwhile to reduce the usefulness of the product in order to induce social imitation.

So, on the road to increasing the influence of reference groups on consumers, since it cannot be achieved by reducing the practicality of the product, the only way is to find ways to increase the visibility of the product.

How to improve product visibility?

Pursue a three-step strategy:

1. Create product uniqueness;
2. Maintain product uniformity;
3. Improve product visibility.

If you want your product to be visible, the first step is to make the product's appearance unique and distinctive, with the aim of clearly differentiating it from similar products.

For example, the Change yogurt recently launched on Mijia Youpin uses a black bottle, which is different from the green, white and blue bottle packaging of conventional yogurt. This creates a very big contrast and leaves a deep impression on people.

This is exactly the same strategy as Apple's headphones back then. Before Apple, almost all headphones on the market were black because the color was easily covered by clothes. Later, Jobs went against the norm and designed Apple headphones in white. In this way, it would be easy to tell who in the crowd was using Apple products.

It’s not enough for your product to be unique, you also need to maintain a consistent look and feel. Let a uniqueness penetrate people's hearts instead of making noise.

For example, Xiaomi's ecological chain products, regardless of the category, all have a certain style of appearance. For example, when you see a router that has an extremely simple design compared to most routers on the market and you can’t put it down, your first reaction is that it must be a Xiaomi product.

For example, whether it is Apple’s iPhone or iPad, both use a round home button, allowing you to recognize it as an Apple product at a glance.

Finally, you need to make your product easier for others to notice, which is called building product visibility.

For example, the Ele.me delivery guys, wearing the same blue work clothes for a century, shuttle through the streets and alleys of the city, greatly increasing the brand's visibility. Even if you don't order food or even go online, Ele.me has occupied a place in your mind.

For example, service providers like Assistant Laiye (an APP that helps you run errands) are best to give limited subsidies to people who work in the company (rather than those who work from home) during the initial promotion. Only in this way can your services and brand be seen by other people in the company, serve as a reference, stimulate word-of-mouth communication, and trigger imitation.

Conclusion

Humans are social animals. We all belong to a certain group and have always longed to fit into a group. In order to gain recognition from the reference group or inner joy, we often imitate the behavior of group members.

In ancient times, this imitative behavior may have been for competing for territory, passing on information, and sharing fruits. In modern times, this behavior is reflected in people’s speech, behavior, food, clothing, housing and transportation. Among them, food, clothing, housing and transportation are reflected in our daily consumption behavior.

The study found that the more visible and less practical a product is, the more consumers are influenced by the reference group, which means that imitation behavior is more likely to occur.

But we have to admit that it is unrealistic to increase the influence of the reference group on the audience by reducing the practicality of the product. Therefore, we can only find ways to improve the visibility of our products. How to improve visibility? You can refer to these three steps:

1. Create product uniqueness;
2. Maintain product uniformity;
3. Improve product visibility.

The author of this article @Leo compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games