Shopping malls are an excellent place to see social psychology in action. They are veritable temples of social influence; the good life is promised to those able and willing to part with the Almighty Dollar, and gleaming collection plates are everywhere you look.
I recently stopped by a favourite clothing store to check out its fall collection. At the entrance, I was greeted by this sign*:
What a deal! All I had to do was try something on, parade around in front of a mirror for a few seconds, take it back off, and then I could save up to nearly 25% on a purchase of something else. You would have to be stupid not to do that, right?!
Well, perhaps, but I knew enough to think twice before donning something off the nearest coat rack. What's the risk, you ask? Let me explain:
First, it is no accident that trial periods are a common sales practice. It is arguably good for you, as a consumer, to be able to "try before you buy". Trial periods allow you to test product claims for yourself: to make sure that those fitted jeans fit your figure, or that the toaster browns the bread evenly. General Motors is now offering a 60-day trial period on any new vehicle purchase -- arguably much better than the classic "drive-around-the-block-for-15-minutes-while-the-salesperson-talks-over-the-noisy-transmission" approach.
However, trial periods may increase commitment to a purchase irrespective of the objective quality of the trial experience. American economist Richard Thaler coined the term endowment effect in 1980, in discussing why people often demand more to part with an item than they are willing to give to obtain it in the first place. In other words, we appear to be biased towards things that we own. This phenomenon has been frequently studied by social psychologists and behavioural economists. Many have interpreted endowment effects as an example of the fact that losses often produce more subjective negativity (i.e., "bad feelings") than equivalent gains will produce subjective positivity (i.e., "good feelings") -- an aspect of prospect theory (see http://prospect-theory.behaviouralfinance.net/) known as loss aversion.
That theoretical interpretation suggests that people need to actually own an item in order to experience endowment effects: you cannot, after all, lose something that you do yet possess. However, more recent experiments suggest that mere contact with an object -- even prior to ownership -- may be enough to trigger similar cognitive, emotional, and behavioural outcomes.
In two studies conducted by Wolf, Arkes, and Muhanna (2008), people participating in real-dollar auctions tended to bid more for a coffee mug the longer they handled it. In one study, the average bid among people who handled the mug for 10 seconds was $2.44; among those who handled the mug for 30 seconds, the average bid was $3.91 -- a whopping 60% increase! (And despite knowing the mug's retail value of $4.49, several participants bid even higher than that.)
Now, I highly doubt (and so do the original authors) that the magnitude of this effect projects linearly into infinity, such that people who hold the mug for 50 seconds would bid another 60% higher, and so on. However, I would expect the duration of exposure to lead to bid increases up to some maximal valuation of the item. And this is all just for a mundane coffee mug; when coupled with additional social dynamics of buying -- such as feelings of competition with other buyers, or perceived rarity of an item, or pressure from the seller -- the effects of extended trial periods could become quite significant indeed.
Getting back to where we started, I never did try anything on at that clothing store. I ended up buying only a few new pairs of socks, which (thankfully) cost far less than $85. Before ringing up my meagre purchase, the cashier tried one more time to draw my attention to the "try something on" sales promotion. With a conspiratorial hush in my voice, I told her that I knew exactly what they were up to, and asked whether it was working as well as I imagined it should.
The cashier replied that it is among their most successful in-store promotions, and that every time they run it their sales figures increase significantly. Lone shoppers, she told me, often chat excitedly with sales staff about all the places they could wear their potential new purchases.
I would love to see more examples from PT readers who have been on either side of the cash register. Until then, let me leave you with a twist on the old shopper's maxim... Caveat experior: "let the trier beware".
* I blurred out the store's name so that you won't think I'm shilling for them -- or their competitors.
References
Thaler, R. H. (1980). Toward a positive theory of consumer choice. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1, 39-60.
Wolf, J. R., Arkes, H. R., & Muhanna, W. A. (2008). The power of touch: An examination of the effect of duration of physical contact on the valuation of objects. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 476-482. (full text available at http://journal.sjdm.org/8613/jdm8613.html)
