How to increase the payment rate of educational products?

Have you ever wondered:

• Why do women always buy bags without restraint, while many men are stingy but have a special liking for electronic products?
• Why are diamonds so expensive and a must-buy for weddings even though they are more abundant than gold and are easy to mine?
• Why are health products more expensive than some medicines, but people are still willing to pay for them?
• Why are people who earn a monthly salary able to save more money than those who earn a daily salary?

If you are not clear about the essence of the above, try doing an experiment among people you know.

• Hypothesis 1: You were going to see a concert, but the 200 yuan you had saved for the concert ticket was lost. Would you still go?
• Assumption 2: You were going to see a movie, but you lost your bus card that you had just recharged with 200 yuan. Would you still go?

This is a classic experiment. The result you get is likely to be that in the first case, a few people say they will buy another concert ticket; while in the second case, most people will buy another one.

Why did this result occur? The reason is that people set up two accounts for the two 200 yuan, one is the concert account and the other is the bus card account.

In hypothesis 1, the money for the ticket is lost. If you still want to go, the concert account will spend an extra 200 yuan. It is not cost-effective to spend 400 yuan to watch a movie.

In hypothesis 2, the 200 yuan in the bus card account and the 200 yuan for the concert tickets are unrelated. If you use the 200 yuan to buy the concert tickets, you are only spending 200 yuan to watch the concert.

1. Definition of Mental Account

Psychological accounts refer to users mentally classifying money/funds into different categories, including savings, maintaining relationships, satisfying vanity, entertainment, love-related, etc. Interestingly, different accounts have different sensitivities to prices.

2. Three major characteristics of mental accounts

1. There is non-substitutability between different consumption items

For different consumption, they are all irreplaceable. For example, savings accounts, daily household expenses, children's expenses, entertainment expenses, smoking and drinking expenses are all independent and irreplaceable. In most scenarios, users will not reduce children's expenses because of an increase in daily household expenses.

The reason why girls keep buying bags and boys are generous with electronic products is that bags or electronic products do not belong to the user's daily expenses, but belong to the user's vanity account.

The diamond content in the world is so high, but it is so expensive because it is endowed with a love account.

2. Different income sources are not interchangeable

This is very easy to understand. Users have different attitudes towards different sources of funds. For example, when it comes to salary, users tend to treat it carefully and allocate it reasonably; when it comes to unexpected money, users tend to make some impulsive purchases.

3. Different amounts of income lead to different user attitudes

As mentioned above, income sources are non-substitutable. Similarly, the same situation also exists for different quantities of the same income source. For example, people have completely different attitudes towards a year-end bonus of 8,000 and 80,000. Most people will spend the 8,000 yuan bonus on their favorite things without hesitation, while users will tend to save the 80,000 yuan bonus.

This can explain why users with monthly salary system save more than those with weekly or daily salary system.

3. How to use mental accounts

1. Create a psychological account for users

In order to sell a product, the product must give the user a psychological account so that the user has a reason to pay for it.

When it comes to creating mental accounts, banks or financial institutions have done a very good job.

The credit cards launched by banks, Huabei launched by Alipay, JD Baitiao, etc., have created a "future money" account for users. This account does not require users to pay anything in the early stage. In the process of swiping the card, users can experience the pleasure of shopping and reduce the heartache of spending money, because credit cards are psychological accounts of "future money", not "present money". We who are "short-sighted" will not pay attention to it, and will not feel too much heartache for users.

When it comes to psychological accounts, we have to mention "digital accounts". Since the popularization of mobile payments, people's consumption has increased significantly. This is because money is just a string of numbers for users, not real checks, so the pain of spending is much less.

2. Promote low-value mental accounts to high-value mental accounts

What is a low-value mental account and what is a high-value mental account?

The love declaration of "a diamond is forever" has transformed diamonds from industrial cutting products into love tokens, with a single diamond costing tens of thousands of dollars.

The slogan "Only Melatonin is accepted as a gift" repositioned it as a gift, moving it from a low-priced "health product account" to a high-value "gift account"

All product positioning should try to be close to the user's high-value psychological account. So what is a high-value mental account? We can use Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory to determine which are high-value mental accounts.

High-value accounts are generally related to the top level of the pyramid, such as love accounts, filial piety accounts, achievement accounts, etc.; low-value accounts are generally related to the bottom level of the pyramid, such as food and clothing accounts, daily consumption accounts.

Distinguishing high value from low value is not just measured in money, it can also be measured in user time and energy. Therefore, any product (function) that requires users to pay needs to position the product closer to the high-value psychological account.

In addition, an extended point is that not only money, time and energy, but any product that requires users to pay needs to think about how to position the product closer to the high-value psychological account. For example, for content that users need to share on WeChat Moments, increase the value of the content and transfer it to the user's "mental account for showing off."

3. Don’t enter the free mental account

This principle is very easy to understand. Users often do not cherish things that are easily obtained because the product has been placed in the user's "free psychological account".

Can you remember how many free coupons given out by platforms have you not used? Do you feel sorry that these coupons have expired? Of course not, because you didn't invest any money, time or energy. Therefore, when providing users with benefits and discounts, users must be made to pay something. For example, supporting the tax exemption and reduction activities and building a building on Tmall to get coupons.

4. Extension: How to use mental accounts in educational products

1. Improve the user psychological account of the product (low-value account -> high-value account)

Change the user's perception of your product/goods, and transfer his psychological account from being unwilling to spend money to being willing to pay for it.

Functional education targets low-value "education accounts", which are less likely to pay for high-value "improvement of workplace competitiveness".

Author: Luffy Han

Source: luffy han