7 Psychological Tricks Businesses Use To Make Us Buy more

Most of us have been there - we've come into a supermarket to buy some groceries and found ourselves buying more and more as we wander around.  It's easy to get caught up in that little process and end up buying way more than we planned on.

Price Anchoring

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MRP: $25 Get it for: $5 Price anchoring is when we base our decisions on the anchor price or the markup price.  Businesses keep the markup price to be substantially high and selling price to be relatively low to make us feel that it's a steal deal.

Scarcity Principle

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Only 5 left The scarcity principle is the way an offering becomes more desirable the fewer of them that are available.  Businesses use this trick to make us feel that if we miss out, it will go to someone else.

FOMO

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7 of your friends bought this recently The fear of missing out is the idea that "if I don't get in on this, everyone else will, and if I do, then people will know I was first!" This is a form of regret aversion.

Social Validation

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132 people rated it as a 5-star product Social validation is "If a lot of people like it, then it must be good."  A little validation is usually enough to make you buy something even if you aren't sure you want it.

Loss Aversion

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Loss: $30 No loss: $20 Businesses take advantage of this psychological phenomenon to ensure we don't lose money by making us feel like losing $20 is less painful than losing $30.

Micro-payments

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Pay just $1 to get an extra life in the game A new technique where businesses offer core product for free but charge a micro-payment to unlock features or benefits..

Bundling

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One for $5 Two for $6 We are easily fooled by the fact that 2 for $6 is cheaper than one for $5.  The goal of bundling is to sell products together so that we end up buying more than we planned on.