A quick case study: impulse buying

Lock up your daughters and hide the family silver, because Hilton has strayed from his Welsh mountain fastness and is now in Newcastle in the heart of northeast England.

Exactly why I’m here I’ll cover in subsequent posts. Right now I’m going to tell you why I bought a book, on impulse, while I was changing trains in Crewe. There are a couple of things that make it an interesting little case study.

(OK, OK… I think it’s interesting, all right? Don’t worry, ADHD sufferers, there’ll be more Muppet videos soon.)

I got off the train at Crewe with about 20 minutes to spare. I was hungry, but I didn’t want to queue for ages for an overpriced, faux-Italian sarnie from Caffé Ritazza. So I went to WH Smith further along the platform. Although Smith’s is primarily a bookshop and newsagent, station branches usually sell packets of sandwiches.

Because there was a queue at the counter, I wandered over to the bookcase and noticed quite a few face-out copies of Persuasion: The art of influencing people by James Borg. I picked one up. Even though I think most business psychology books are written by hucksters and charlatans, I decided to buy it within twenty seconds.

Why so quickly? Three reasons:

1. Check out the cover. Isn’t it red?

I may seem to be delving into the science of the blindingly obvious here, but if the cover hadn’t been so garish I might never have noticed the book. I was in a hurry, and it just happened to catch my eye. It was clearly placed to attract impulse buys, and the colour helped a lot.

2. There were lots of big, fat testimonials all over the front and back covers. Testimonials are absolutely vital in marketing - they’re the number one tool for building trust. And the more that potential buyers trust the people who are quoted, the more they trust the product. At the top of the front cover is a quote from the late, great Sir John Harvey-Jones, which told me that the book contained genuinely useful business information - if it had taught JHJ something, I thought, it must be good. On the back is a quote from (among others) Sir Antony Jay, who co-wrote the immortal BBC comedy Yes Minister. That made me think that it wasn’t a dull, geeky book for inadequate middle managers, but might be quite cool.¹

3. I’m a sucker. But then, most of us are.

So the book’s marketers understood an old, vital lesson that many people forget: first impressions count. Customers most certainly do judge books by their covers. Impulse buys are rational decisions, but they’re generally less considered than most purchases we make. Visibility and trust are key marketing ‘buttons’, and for the right product you can prompt impulse buying by hitting them hard.

As for Borg’s tips, if you can cope with an author who dedicates his book to J.K. Rowling (because ‘..she’s reminded us all of the importance of magic in our lives’, yeeuch) it’s a worthwhile read, with lots of good tips. Probably worth the cover price, even if you’re a confident and assertive negotiator already.

Click here to buy Persuasion from Amazon.co.uk

^{1. Bear in mind that celebrity endorsements aren’t always what they seem. Authors have a habit of saying nice things about other authors whose agent and/or publisher they share. But this generally isn’t the sort of calculation you make when you’re impulse buying, even if you understand how the industry works.}

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