Faith is a big thing for us! It is the fundamental seed of all religions! How do Humans form faith? And does marketing profit from this aspect of human nature?
In behavioral marketing, we use the Placebo Effect to instill beliefs and expectations about the performance of our products. The effect encourages consumers to magnify product quality.
There is overwhelming evidence that suggests that perceived quality translates to experienced quality!
Faith does take time, but not too much. In fact, if nurtured right, any belief may become Faith in a matter of months!
Does marketing use this strategy to affirm your beliefs?
You bet!
Let’s take Apple’s iPhone as an example. Their famous moto (slogan) is “Think different.”
A powerful slogan that reflects their mission to be the technology that everyone will use in the future.
Clearly targeting the young generations, who naturally think differently and want to differentiate from previous generations, Apple has set their target mark and the Faith Marketing Campaign is on!
1. BELIEF ELABORATION
Individuals that chose Apple over any other competitors, found themselves to be Advanced, Open-minded and Forward-thinking! You can see how easy it is to Elaborate on this particular belief; as younger people are constantly searching for reasons to explain their creative, trendy and new behaviors.
2. BELIEF PERSONALIZATION
Once Apple has set the standard for Innovation, now it is time to allow the customer to personalize their products and experiences; to make it their own!
Each smartphone became special! Each customer was able quickly and easily to personalize their cell phones. The cell phone became their music and video player. It became their small on-the-way diary. It contained the background they like, the theme they liked and so on.
Truth is, there are no two iPhones that are similar. Every iPhone is different because of the user!
3. BELIEF REPETITION
Branding is all about shaping the perception of the consumer about a product. Apple did just that!
Branding reminded everyone how special and unique Apple was. So much so, that better products produced by competitors (at a cheaper price) still didn’t match the experience provided by Apple’s iPhone.
But that was not enough. To ensure that all customers attentively stick to the iPhone, Apple’s marketers decided it would be best to integrate all Apple’s devices and give the customer a wholistic experience over a multitude of devices. This seems as a great way for customers to access all their information and manipulate it with ease.
However, this is not the reason why Apple focuses on multi-device cross-integration. The real reason is that they were the only company offering such an experience. All other companies offered different devices that are not intrinsically paired to each other (e.g. SAMSUNG cell phone and TOSHIBA laptop are not paired).
They may not refer to it as “Faith” but I dare you choose another vendor!
The customer is forced to elect the same behavioral pattern and stick to Apple’s iPhone – repeating the purchase over and over and reaffirming it with other Apple’s devices, such as laptops and tablets.
FromBuzzToScience 