Rory Sutherland (Executive Creative Director and Vice-Chairman, OgilvyOne London and Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK…) apart from having a very wide business card, has some interesting things to say about the human psychology of buying things. The weirdness in people’s heads when deciding whether to buy stuff, is also known as ‘behavioural economics‘. Or perhaps ‘Freakonomics’ if you’re really trendy/nerdy (trerdy?). Rory’s written an interesting blog article on the opposing buying styles of Maximers and Satisficers.
ARE YOU A MAXIMISER OR SATISFICER?
Maximisers search out the best, most obscure or interesting of things to satisfy their vision of themselves as experts and different from the hoy polloi. A more common (yawn) business speak term could be “Early Adpoters” or the “bleeding edgers”. These are the people who bought the very first iPhones to play their obscure music on, who like driving ze Technic German automobiles, holiday where you first need a first aid course and eat only from recommended restaurants. No one is a true maximiser in all things of course, as the effort required to make buying decisions is so great. It’s a major commitment to have the best, and if all maximisers put as much strenuous mental effort into buying dog food as they did into deciding which colour of Audi they were going to buy, then we could tell them apart quite simply as being the one’s stood rigid in the street staring at the pavement. Funnily enough, I think I might have done a fair bit of sidewalk staring whilst Christmas shopping, but that’s another story.
So what then are the Satisficers? These are the far more contented middle off the road people who’s buying decisions revolve around “I hope this isn’t crap”. These are the people for whom safety, not excellence, is paramount. The thing they want is something “good enough that doesn’t embarrass or disappoint me.”
A middle of the road car with a lot of legs (Image from Car Body Design)
In reality we are all a varying blend of both of these two mental states. Most people will display some Maximiser thinking when they really care about the thing they are buying, take Wedding dresses for example. But apparently the majority of people in day to day life are Satisficers, wanting the same things that they have bought before, or their friends and family have bought, things they know they can rely on to be “Not Bad”.
This has some very interesting implications for Product Designers like ourselves. By our very nature we are always striving to design the very best for people, the really cool thing that everyone will love to own (so we think). Perhaps if we are looking to make business more money, we should be looking to tone things down a bit, make them safe and not a scary stretch to buy. The super dooper funky product with extra functionality, excellent usability and zero environmental impact may be all well and good, but we have to be careful not to make people feel uncomfortably obtrusive using it, or insecure that it will let them down and make them appear foolish for buying it. In short we might need to consider (judiciously) dumbing down to make a more democratic product.
Of course branding has a huge part to play in making people feel secure in thier purchasing decisions. As much as I would hate to admit it, this is where Ford and Volkswagen are so much cleverer than say SAAB or Alfa Romeo. No Satisficer really cares about a funny half fighter jet car or the 0-60 performance statistics. They want to know that they are not about to hand over a large sum of cash to make themselves look a bit strange in front of their friends and neighbours.
Here’s a revolutionary product that failed because people were scared they might? look “a bit daft” in them:
Sinclair C5 - Ladies loved the matching colour scheme
Anyway enough of all that. Here’s what they should have done for commuters. Oh, what could have been…
