Low Involvement vs. High Involvement

 In a post earlier this week, I made a reference to low involvement items. There are both low involvement and high involvement items. The customer has little invested in low involvement items so spends little time thinking about the decision, often relying on heuristics to make the decision:  "Hey, there are some Magic packs. I like Magic. I will buy one."  Low involvement items do not have a major impact on the consumer's life and their effect is generally fleeting:  "Do you want to play a game of Catan?"  "Sure.". Comic books are often a low involvement item as their comparatively low price makes picking up the first of a new series to check it out a low risk decision. 

High involvement items make more of an impact on your life, such as a house purchase, choice of college or even deciding to purchase a new game with which you are unfamiliar. Since learning a new game can take a considerable investment in time and learning, most people do not buy a game with which they are unfamiliar on impulse. They spend some time researching and thinking about it before making the purchase. Of course, once they purchase it and find they like it, purchases of future expansions become a low involvement decision.

What Is A Heuristic?

 In another of my occasional posts on consumer behavior and , sicne I have used the term before, I wanted to look at what a heuristic is. I have said that it is a decision rule our brain uses to help make decisions more quickly and easily and it has the following characteristics:

1. Only some information is considered when making the decision

2. Some information that might be useful in making the decision is ignored

For example, one possible heuristic would be "I enjoy worker placement games more than other games." If I hear that a new worker placement game has arrived at my FLGS, I am going to want to take a look at it while I would pay little to no attention if I heard that a new dice game had arrived. However, if I heard a new dice rolling worker placement game arrived, I would want to take a look at it.

Using heuristics allows us to make decisions in a number of areas without too much effort, at the cost of overlooking items that might interest us, since generally we only use them in low involvement decisions.

Familiarity Heuristic or Why People Like Monopoly

 A heuristic is  a decision rule we use to help us, well , made decisions such as "I like pizza".          When deciding what to each ,  that I already like pizza will influence the decision. We use a number of heuristics in order to help us make daily decisions so that our brain does start from scratch ever time it has to decide something. 

The familiarity  heuristic  says that things we judge things that are familiar to us as more important or more likely to happen than are things unfamiliar to us.        You can see an example of this in this year's Super Bowl between Tampa Bay and   Kansas City. Oddsmakers gave Kansas City the edge because of their play this year and their younger quarterback. However, if you asked the average person with only passing familiarity with football, they would have picked Tampa Bay. Why? Tom Brady. Not because of his skill but because they had heard of him. Familiar with something makes us think it is better , so we are more likely to select it and quite often, we are right to do so. If something is not  "important" or "good", it does not attract our attention and we do not remember it.

Thus Pokemon, D&D and Monopoly (yes Monopoly) dominate  sales in their categories in the mass market because the average customer is familiar with them. If I have heard of it, it must be "good".

Anchor Points

 Why have a Power 9 card or an Evolutions Charizard in your store, ever if you know your target market is such that they will never purchase it? Two reasons:  1) there is always the chance that someone will buy it and 2) it serves as an Anchor Point. 

An anchor point is an item in your store that is  priced significantly higher than other items you stock in its category. The high priced item makes the other items look reasonably priced by comparison.  The price on a Revised Tundra makes a Valki, God of Lies look cheap by comparison and reduces the customer's resistance  to what they otherwise might consider a high priced card. At a GAMA Trade Expo out in Las Vegas a few years ago, the $100 and $125 prices on some of the steak dinners made the $40 chicken dinner I ordered seem a bargain by comparison.  When ordering wines, the wine list will usually contain a $200-$300 bottle which makes the $30 to $50 vintages seem a value, making customers much more open to ordering them.

Perfection Fallacy

 Whenever the semester starts  I always send out an email to the students about the concept of the "perfection fallacy". The perfection fallacy is the belief by people that everything will always work out perfectly. A classic example is starting your car. You walk out in  the morning, put your key in the ignition and 99 times out of 100, it starts up perfectly. What do you do, though, on those extremely rare occasions when the key does not start the car? Keep turning it in the hope that eventually it will catch? Pound the dashboard and yell curses as if that will do any good? Do you have a back up plan for the rare times when that happens? Is the Uber app installed on your phone so you can call for a ride? Do you have a friend you can call to give you a lift?

In the case of a game store, what do you do if that order you expected to arrive does not show up? Most of the time they show up when expected but what do you do when they do not? Do you have a phone number to call to see where your product is or do you have another project to work on instead of checking in the shipment?

A common example I cite to students is setting aside time on Friday to finish up assignments, then finding out the internet crashed or they feel sick or their kids are sick? What happens then? The best way to avoid falling prey to the perfection fallacy is to plan ahead. If something has a deadline, endeavor to start it ahead of the deadline so that, if something interrupts, you still have time built into your schedule to accommodate the delay.

Hammurabi’s Code and you

 I' ve been  reading up on one of my favorite topics, consumer behavior and how it can be influenced.  From a marketing and game store point of view, you can use these methods, which date back almost 40 centuries of recorded history and are based on the concept of recipricosity,  to influence your customers or conversely, recognize when they are being used on you. Without further ado:

1.       Ask +Because—Just asking someone to do something for you can prove pretty powerful. It is rather amazing but people view you more favorably when you ask them to do something for you than when you offer to do something for them. To make the ask even more powerful, give them a reason why you want them to do something for you. It doesn’t have to be a good reason really, just a reason.   “Because” appears a pretty powerful word.  In one hidden study, people standing in line at a copy machine were asked by the experimenter if they could go first. Most of the time, the experimenter was told “No”. However, if the line cutter gave a reason such as “Could I go ahead of you because I need to get these done for my boss,”, over 70% of the time, the response was OK. In some cases, the line cutter even said “May I go ahead of you because I want to go ahead of you,” and over half the time the people in line would agree. 

2.       Foot in the Door—A small ask opens the door to a much larger one.  Fairly often, one of the banks I do business with will offer me a $1000 life insurance policy at no charge. By accepting the offer, I give them the opportunity to come back later and pitch me a more expensive policy.  WOTC’s D&D Starter Set is one of the best marketing tools any company in the gaming industry currently uses and is a wonderful example of using the “foot in the door”. Get people to try out a low cost version of the game, then, when they find they like it, upgrade them to the more expensive version.

3.       Give a Gift—Giving a gift before making a big ask enhances the likelihood that the person you give the gift is more likely to say yes. This is why so many charities send you stuff like calendars, note pads, address labels etc. when  sending a letting asking for a donation. The idea is, by giving you a small gift, you will be more responsive to the part of the letter asking for the donation. Over the past year, I have even seen charities move one step beyond that and small amounts of cash, a nickel, 50 cents, even a dollar or two with the plea that you send back the money to help them along with your donation.

All of these, as noted above are based on the concept of recipricosity.  If someone does something nice for us, we are influenced to do something nice back. If they do something harmful to us, we feel justified in doing something harmful back. The concept has been codified back as far as Hammaurbi’s time, about 1754 BC and is still valid today.

The Mandela Effect

Ran across a discussion of the Mandela Effect today. The Mandela Effect occurs when you "remember" something that is not so. For example, does Rich Uncle Pennybags, from Monopoly, wear a monocle? Is C-3PO all gold?  The answer to both questions is no but most people, until you show them, say "Yes".

Did You Know People Still Play Boardgames?

I was listening to NPR’s Here and Now program and caught this story on the resurgence of analog games, as the reporter refers to them. Every so often, a  reporter in the media  in need of a human interest story will catch onto the fact that millions of people still play boardgames regularly and will write a story announcing that there are games beyond Monopoly and Clue and that people actually still “gasp” play boardgames as if it was something that millions of people don’t already know. As the Here and Now program points out, boardgames are the largest funded category on Kickstarter, dwarfing their digital brethren in terms of amounts pledged. According to ICV2,  boardgame sales have increased year to year for the past 8 years, sold over $1.2 billion (eclipsing the number of comic sold) in 2015 and fueled a 50% year to year increase in Dungeons & Dragons sales at WOTC/Hasbro. Boardgames are big and yet it still seems as if daily, game store owners report customers walking into their store, looking at all the stock and asking “So where are your games?” Why? Here are a couple of reasons:

1.       Size of digital gaming market—Remember that I just mentioned that boardgame sales topped $1.2 billion in 2015. That’s a pretty impressive figure, except when you compare it to the digital gaming market which is projected to top $100 billion in sales this year. Compare $1.2 billion to $100+ billion and you can see that boardgame sales are a drop in the bucket compared to the sales of their digital brethren. When you have numbers like that, it is  no wonder the average customer thinks of digital games first when they go into a “game store”.

2.       Confirmatory bias—This is the human tendency to judge everything in terms of its relationship to ourselves and to seek and be more comfortable with information that confirms our beliefs. Since I run a game store, I deal with what the reporter in the Here and Now story referred to as “analog games” on a regular basis. Most of my regular customers play analog or table top games and we primarily sell tabletop games. Due to our extensive familiarity with them, we naturally thing of table top games when we think of games, forgetting that the average consumer has more likely played a digital game last and are far more familiar with those games than they are the ones that we sell.

3.       The Wal-Mart Effect.  Customers are far more likely to have shopped in a Wal-mart, Target or Walgreen’s than they are to have shopped in one of our tabletop game stores and are therefore much more likely to have seen the games for sale there and to view Monopoly, Sorry and Clue as the standard of a boardgame. Confirmatory bias works both ways. When a customer spends all of their shopping time in a mass market store, they are going to get exposed to mass market games and not have any reason to consider the huge variety of other games out there, either at your FLGS or available through Kickstarter.

Maybe, instead of shaking my head at the next of these stories about discovering that people play boardgames, I need  to figure out better ways of getting the word out to the huge numbers of people that do not play “our” boardgames.

Cognitive Dissonance

Following up on yesterday's post on opportunity cost, I wanted to talk a bit about the concept of cognitive dissonance, one form of which is "buyer's remorse". Cognitive dissonance is the attempt by a person to reconcile two opposing viewpoints or beliefs in such a way that the person can accept them. Politicians are a great example of something that often causes cognitive dissonance as a politician will often support many positions that a constituent also supports, such as economic development and infrastructure rebuilding for the area represented, expanded health care, support for veterans etc. but holds one or more positions that differ significantly from the constituent's stance such as gun control or abortion. The constituent then has to reconcile in their mind the differing positions and come to a rationalization either causing them to drop support or maintain it.

In the case of buyer's remorse, a purchaser may make a decision and then regret it afterwards. In order to minimize this, the buyer will often seek out reinforcement from others that they made the right decision, If they purchase cards for a Magic deck, they will ask other players to look at the deck and (hopefully) say how the new cards improved the deck. A miniature painter will show off their work, hoping for admiring comments to reinforce their belief that they did a good job. Boardgamers will seek out other players for a new game, looking for reinforcement that other players enjoy the game as much as the purchaser does.

Customers often like to shop with someone else, getting their feedback before making a purchase. Boardgamers also often check sites such as Board Game Geek for confirmation that other people think a game is good before purchasing it for themselves. No body wants to feel they made a bad decision.

Influencing People

This week's ICV2 column looks at the 6 principles of persuasion, which we use to influence others. A key factor is social proof, evidence that other people think the same way that we do. This is why when a game or comic gets "hot" everyone wants one (and prices go up).

Anchor Points

Happened to catch a story on "anchor points" this morning on NPR and thought I would discuss how game and comic stores utilize such concepts in influencing your behavior.

The concept of the that having a high priced item for sale makes the prices of other items in the same place of business seem lower and more reasonable by comparison. Allow me to explain with a common example in restaurants.

The wine list in a restaurant will often have a list of what the customer might perceive as expensive wines and then one really expensive, say a series of vintages ranging from $20 to $60 per bottle and then one bottle priced at $500. The $500 bottle is an anchor point, making the other bottles appear cheaper by comparison and reducing your resistance to purchasing a more expensive vintage.

Stores especially that deal in single Magic and other TCGs as well as comic shops that deal in rare comics use the concept of the anchor point to reduce resistance to the purchase of a higher priced single card or comic book.

Say you have a Jace, the Mind Scuptor from a FTV:  Twenty set in stock at $70 and a Beta Bayou in stock selling for $1400. The $1400 card becomes the anchor point, setting the upper limit of price on the cards on display at $1400 and making the $70 Jace a bargain by comparison.

Similarly, a $2000 copy of a Superman comic from the 1940s, makes the $300 Spider-man comic from the 1960s seem comparatively reasonably priced.

The store may not plan to even sell the anchor item, though I am certain they would if someone offered the full price. Just having it there increases the likelihood of other items, otherwise perceived as expensive, selling.

AIDA

The AIDA model is a common descriptor for modeling human consumption behavior.  It stands for

Attention--Initially, the consumer is unaware of the product and the manufacturer or seller must take action to bring it to the potential customer's attention. Currently, one of the best ways to bring a product to the customers attention is through Facebook, as, with a relatively small payment, you can place information about your product in front of thousands of people who FB has determined have interest in it.

Interest--The consumer shows interest in the product. If you are at Sam's Club this might entail sampling one of the many food products they offer tastes of around mealtime. In a game store, this might lead to a quick demo session of the product in question.

Desire--The customer shows desire for the product, asking it to be held back for them, putting it on layaway or putting it on an Amazon wish list.

Action--The consumer finally pulls the trigger so to speak and buys the product.

Heuristics and Gaming

“A full belly makes a dull brain.”

“He that lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.”

“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.”

Just a few of the aphorisms that Benjamin Franklin published in Poor Richard’s Almanac during the years that he published it. These are also what behavioral psychologists call “heuristics”, simple efficient rules that people learn to use to make decisions, come to judgement and solve problems. People especially use these when faced by a complex decision, breaking it down to components in order to solve each section in order to come up with a decision that satisfies, or satisfices, the maker. What does this have to do with games, you ask? Well, everything really. We use them all the time when deciding what games to buy and play.

Take Fantasy Flight Games. They have a well-deserved reputation for putting out high quality, highly enjoyable, comparatively high priced games (They also have a reputation for short discounts and lengthy out of stocks on popular products, but that’s another topic). When customers hear that FFG will release another game, they expect the components will be high quality and the game will play very well, but the price will run higher than a similar game from another publisher. That is what is called representativeness heuristic, a judgement made based on how similar the situation is to previous ones we have experienced and hold in our mind.  You have bought FFG games which have met these criteria in the past, so you generally expect the games you buy from the company in the future to meet the same criteria. One could also view representativeness as exemplifying a company’s brand. 

Escalation of commitment is another heuristic that trading card games especially use. Escalation of commitment is the belief that, despite evidence to the contrary, that continuing to spend money on something will make it pay off.  We keep spending money on expansions for a game because we think that the next one will be better, that the game will “break through” and everyone will appreciate how great it is, or that the next pack of cards I open will have the card I want in it. We hate abandoning anything and stick with a game system  long past the time we should move on to something else because we hate to admit we were wrong  (Hence the continued sales of 4^th edition D&D).

The anchoring heuristic increases the importance to which we assign first impressions. We rely heavily on the first piece of information we receive in making subsequent decisions. When you play a game, your first experience influences heavily your willingness to play that game again. Game demo people know that anchoring, though they may not think of it as such, plays a very important part in the success or failure of a game demo. If the person they demo the game for has fun playing, even if they lose, that person is much more likely to want to play again or even purchase a copy of the game. If the same player gets stomped during the demo, they very likely will form a negative anchor on the game and not want to buy it. Ergo, most demo teams I know have instructions to either lose demo games or keep the final results close. Under no circumstances should they play to completely dominate the player for whom they are running the demo.

See, not only does stuff like heuristics have applicability to games and gaming but Benjamin Franklin was talking about them two centuries before we had a term for them.