Only 7,319 of you will receive this email | Nudge Newsletter 🧠


Bowles' bowl cajole.

In the runup to Prince Charles' and Camilla Parker Bowles' April 2005 wedding, souvenir sales were disappointingly low.

Shops from London to Windsor reported sluggish sales of tea towels, coffee mugs, and commemorative bowls.

The British public wasn't fussed.

But then overnight, demand changed.

Suddenly, sales sky-rocketed, with Brits cleaning out shops and buying up all available stock.

Did Brits suddenly change their opinions? No, the date changed.

Due to Pope John Paul's funeral, the wedding date was pushed from the 8th of April to the 9th, resulting in lots of incorrectly dated souvenirs.

Parker-Bowles's bowl sales were driven by pure scarcity.

According to Steve Martin in his latest book Influence at Work:

Several journalists already in Windsor to cover the royal event asked shoppers leaving stores with bags of souvenirs whether they were supporters of the royal family. Most said no. The motivation to purchase royal mementoes had little to do with the royal wedding. They simply thought that the misdated items would be rarer and, consequently, worth more in the future.

Scarce resources drive sales.

They turn uninterested Brits into shelf-clearing customers.

In one study, wholesale beef buyers more than doubled their orders after being informed that a shortage of Australian beef was likely due to forecasted bad weather.

The opportunity is clear.

If there's something about your proposal that's genuinely rare or exclusive, make it as prominent as possible.

Cheers!

Phill

Nudge Newsletter

I spend 18 hours each week turning marketing psychology into readable newsletters.

Read more from Nudge Newsletter

Input Bias Read online Does the 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 put into a shop display 𝘒𝘀𝘡𝘢𝘒𝘭𝘭𝘺 influence sales? That's what MoralesΒΉ set out to answer in 2005. Participants were shown round the same store, except half saw the shelves 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭π₯𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐀𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐒𝐭𝐑 𝐑𝐒𝐠𝐑-𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐒𝐬𝐩π₯𝐚𝐲𝐬. The other participants saw the same products, but with a π₯𝐨𝐰-𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐒𝐬𝐩π₯𝐚𝐲. The results are striking. Those who saw the high-effort display were willing to pay 24.4% π’Žπ’π’“π’†. After seeing a store display like Boots, customers were willing to pay...

Concrete Phrases Read online Which electric bus would stick in your mind? It's not even a competition. Copy that's easy to visualise is easy to memorise. In 2021, Richard ShottonΒΉ showed participants a number of vague phrases, like 'innovative quality', and then some concrete phrases, e.g., 'money in your pocket'. Shotton’s concrete phrases were 8.6x more likely to be remembered. Richard Shotton's Concrete Phrases Study He’d proved the concrete phrases' effect, a phenomenon first discovered...

Psychology of Pricing Read online 1) Charm Pricing for High-Quality Products Imagine you’re buying a shatterproof iPhone case Does it matter if it is priced at Β£49.99 or Β£49.95? Well, yes. Apple uses charm pricing but usually ends prices with a 5. Gendall, Fox, and Wilton (1998)ΒΉ ran an experiment with fast-moving consumer goods (fly spray, cheese) and durables (electric kettles). They found that prices with endings in 99 cents are more attractive for low-priced, fast-moving consumer goods...