Why You're More Likely To Buy Something When Shopping On Your iPad
The
"endowment effect," which makes us overvalue items, is stronger on a
touch screen.
People
tend to increase the value of an item the moment they take ownership of it.
Psychologists call this the "endowment effect." It shows up even in
trivial things, like coffee mugs or chocolate bars, that people just
received in a lab setting. The slightly irrational new owners of these items
want much more money for them than rational buyers are willing to pay. Monkeys do it, too. Evidently it's
evolutionary.
So
strong is the endowment effect that we don't have to physically own something
for the effect to take hold. The mere suggestion of ownership is enough to get
our guns going. One recent study found that people who touched an item felt an increased sense of
ownership toward it. A follow-up study found that simply imagining touching an object produced the
same possessive feeling.
The implications are clear: toucher
beware.
That evidence has clear implications
for consumers: toucher beware. Once you come into contact with something in a
store, you might be more willing to buy it, since you already feel like you own
it. Back in 2003, the Illinois attorney general went so far as to issue a
warning to retailers who encouraged holiday shoppers to handle the merchandise,
for just that reason.
Recently, Boston College researchers
S. Adam Brasel and James Gips wondered whether the endowment effect might kick
in when people buy things online, too. They were most curious about people who
shop on tablets, since tablet users pinch, zoom, and tap on an item. In short,
they touch it.
The interfaces people use to access
content can fundamentally change the way we see that content.
"The core thing that we're
starting to work on is this idea that the interfaces that people are using to
access content can really fundamentally change the way we see that
content," Brasel tells Co.Design.
Brasel and Gips designed two
experiments to test that idea. In the first, they brought test participants
into a lab and let them roam around websites for two products: college
sweatshirts and walking tours of New York City. The participants all sat at a
computer but some of them used an old-school mouse to search, others a
touchpad, and others touched the screen itself.
After the participants chose a
product, they told the researchers how much money they were willing to accept
if someone else wanted to buy it from them. On average, people in the
touch-screen condition wanted significantly more money (roughly $68) than
people using the mouse ($47) or the touchpad ($44). Some form of the endowment
effect had clearly occurred.
"The key thing we saw move in
terms of our variables is this 'willing to accept' price," says Brasel.
"That's actually a really good measure of this idea of implied
ownership."
A
touchable screen isn't the same as a tablet, though, so Brasel and Gips
arranged a second experiment pitting an iPad against a touchpad laptop.
Once again, test participants navigated the websites of fake products (this
time a sweatshirt and a tent, to control for "touchability"). And
once again, after making their choice they told the researchers how much money
they would need to sell it. (Test participants used both devices and purchased
both items over the course of the study, for balance.)
Impulse
levels might be harder to control when we're tablet shopping.
In
the iPad condition, the endowment effect thrived. On average, test participants
using the tablet wanted to sell their item for significantly more than those
using the laptop (roughly $213 to $154). Pressing a finger against a digital
image on a fake website in a laboratory--that's all it took to make people feel
like they owned an item, and to value it more as a result.
"I
think our impulse levels might be a little harder to control when we're tablet
shopping than when we're computer shopping," says Brasel. "We're just
touching it. It's right there. We already feel like we own it." The work
was published online this month in the Journal of
Consumer Psychology.
Tablet-shopping advisory aside, site
designers can learn some lessons from the research, too. In the first study,
Brasel points out, test participants felt a little more attached to the
sweatshirts than to the walking tours--likely because they're a more
"touchable" product. "Highlighting those tactile elements might
be extremely effective for someone who's using a direct-touch interface,"
he says.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3022127/evidence/why-youre-more-likely-to-buy-something-when-shopping-on-your-ipad?partner=newsletter
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