The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (23 page)

I
n October 2013, the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan fined the Samsung Corporation 10 million New Taiwan dollars (around $350,000) for allegedly paying people to post reviews and comments on social media and websites attacking the products of Samsung’s longtime rival HTC and at the same time praising its own.
6

The case attracted much attention, primarily because there can be no doubting how reliant on online reviews people are when it comes to making decisions. For example, research conducted by the firm Penn Schoen Berland found that seven in ten Americans will consult online product reviews and consumer ratings before making a purchase. No surprise then that the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission took prompt action against Samsung. As you’ll recall from chapter 47, the scholar Roy Baumeister and his colleagues found that people “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.”

This negativity bias, when considered in the context of an online environment, poses a considerable challenge for individuals or organizations that rely on the reviews of previous customers to promote their business. If potential customers view positive reviews as less valuable than negative ones, what steps can a business take to increase the chances that positive reviews posted online will be seen as valuable—without resorting to underhanded or devious tactics such as the posting of fake negative reviews aimed at competitors?

It turns out there is one step in particular that we recommend. And as you probably guessed, it is a small and very effective one.

Marketing researchers Zoey Chen and Nicholas Lurie hypothesized that a positive online review would be seen as just as valuable as a negative one if the reviewer truthfully stated that the review was based on an experience that had happened that same day (for example, posting a review of a restaurant using statements such as “I just got back from this restaurant” or “my partner and I visited today”).

One reason this might be the case is because it is pretty obvious that someone posting a negative review has likely had a genuinely poor experience. However, if they signal that their review is based on an experience they had that day, readers are more likely to assume that the positive review is a genuine reflection of the experience itself, rather than other explanations for the positive review, such as broadcasting to the world they have good taste in choosing where to dine, travel, etc.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers extracted over 65,000 reviews posted on Yelp.com about popular restaurants in five major US cities. In total they looked at reviews for almost 100 restaurants over the previous three years. For each review they measured the number of “useful” votes the review received from readers, the star rating that accompanied the review on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 stars indicated the most positive experience), and finally the presence of any words or phrases in the review that indicated it had been written on the same day that the restaurant was visited.

What they found was fascinating. When there were
no
cues as to when the reviews had been written, the negative reviews for that restaurant were voted as much more useful to readers than the positive ones. However when it was clear that the reviews had been written on the
same day
that the restaurant had been visited, those who read the positive reviews voted them as at least as useful as the negative ones.

In a separate online study, participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups and asked to imagine they were picking a restaurant for dinner. Each of the four groups was then shown a review for “Joe’s Restaurant.” Two of the groups were shown a review that was either positive or negative. The other two groups were also shown either a positive or a negative review, but this time the review mentioned that it had been written on the day of the restaurant visit. Additionally, all the groups were shown a neutral review for “Mike’s Restaurant” before being asked to select the restaurant they preferred, or to choose neither.

Consistent with the finding from Yelp.com, when the review was both positive and included the presence of a temporal cue, it significantly increased the choice of Joe’s Restaurant. In fact, among participants who saw a timely and positive review, fully 100 percent chose to dine there.

If the timeliness of a positive review truly leads to that review being viewed as more valuable, one small but important change that marketers should make is to encourage consumers to review products immediately after consumption and to
explicitly
communicate that immediacy in their review. Many restaurants will include a web address on the check inviting diners to leave a review. This research suggests that changing the usual “If you enjoyed your experience, please review us on Yelp or TripAdvisor” to the more unusual “If you enjoyed your experience, please review us on Yelp or TripAdvisor and say you were here today!” could be a small difference that pays big dividends.

Web managers of online retailers should, after a transaction, include a link inviting customers to post a review of their experience. They should also include a pop-up reminding customers that their review will likely receive more “likes” if they highlight the fact that they made their purchase just minutes earlier.

People who review books online should recognize the potential benefits of including temporal references in their online posts, too. Doing so should not only benefit the authors but also the reviewers themselves, due to the likely increase in positive responses to their recommendations. In such situations all that remains is to decide which book you’ll be waxing lyrical about.

Hey! We can think of one!
:-)

A
ffectionately known as the Clown Prince of Denmark, Victor Borge, the much-loved Danish-American humorist, entertainer, and pianist, was reputed to have said that “laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

Laughter connects people, builds relationships, and, according to research conducted by a team of persuasion scientists, can even be a profitable business tool when it comes to negotiating with others online.

In our increasingly global economy, an estimated 850 million corporate email accounts now send and receive an average of 110 emails per day, and not just for routine messaging. Many businesses now use these exchanges as a primary means of working through quite complex interactions. Take negotiations for example. When negotiations occur between parties who are remote from each other, email becomes an attractive and efficient means of communication, allowing vendors to reach greater numbers of potential clients and customers to connect with a multitude of suppliers.

In many instances email exchanges can act as a useful and cost-effective filter prior to formal negotiations. For example, a potential purchaser may reach out by email to a short list of suppliers, with the parties exchanging messages before a decision is made to progress to phone calls, video conferencing, or perhaps Skype or FaceTime communication. Finally (and by this point it is by no means guaranteed) a face-to-face meeting might be agreed to in order to conclude the negotiations.

So given their ubiquitous nature, how can you use emails to influence the development of the trust that is so important to successful business transactions?

In a wonderful series of studies, Terri Kurtzberg and her colleagues Charles E. Naquin and Liuba Belkin wanted to study the role that humor plays during the initial stages of a series of email exchanges in business and negotiation settings. The studies looked at whether the use of humor had any resulting impact on the levels of trust that were developed between negotiating parties, as well as any impact on the commercial outcomes gained by the parties concerned.

In one of their studies Kurtzberg and her colleagues arranged for teams of business professionals to negotiate a specific and reasonably complex contract via email. Half the study participants were paired up with their negotiation opponents and simply told to get down to business. The other half were instructed to first email their opponent a cartoon in which Scott Adams’s Dilbert ruins a negotiation: first by trying to accept an offer before it’s been made and then—also before any offer has been made—by alluding to an alternative and “better” offer from another party. To check that the cartoon was both effective at inducing laughter and also inoffensive, the researchers conducted a pre-test with a different group of businesspeople in advance. (It was found to be both.)

The researchers hypothesized that offering the cartoon before the negotiation began would create increased levels of trust between the negotiators, eventually leading to higher gains. And they were exactly right. The group who initiated the negotiation by sending the cartoon generated high levels of trust which, in turn, led to a 15 percent greater commercial outcome. That’s a pretty impressive difference for such a small change.

So far, so good. But what about situations where the flexibility of the negotiations is limited? Many organizations, in an attempt to mitigate the variability of their negotiation outcomes, will set out pricing structures or limit the items on which negotiations can be conducted, such as credit terms and delivery schedules. In such situations, would opening the exchange with a humorous cartoon still influence outcomes?

When the researchers tested this, the negotiators who were sent the cartoon first were
more than twice
as likely to send a first offer that was within the boundaries of an acceptable bargaining arena compared to those that weren’t sent the cartoon. In short, this single, simple, small change resulted in much more efficient negotiating and increased levels of trust between the parties.

The immediate implications seem obvious. In a time-c
onstrained
context it’s easy to rattle off a curt and pithy email to others, if only in an attempt to cross another item off your burgeoning to-do list. But this study suggests that doing so, especially at the early stages of a negotiation, could turn out to be an expensive mistake.

Accordingly, an investment of even just one extra minute to humanize your initial exchanges can be important. As the researchers suggest, “Having some sense of ‘the other side’ as a real person and not just an email address seems to help negotiators build trust and rapport, and thus create better agreements with each other.” In fact, additional studies conducted by Kurtzberg and several other researchers found that volunteering personal information in the opening exchanges of an online negotiation in an attempt to uncover a connection with the “other side” not only reduced deadlocks in those subsequent negotiations but also increased commercial outcomes for both parties concerned.

Clearly we are not suggesting that in an attempt to increase the engagement and response rates of your email messages you divulge information so personal that it puts you at a potential risk (or simply scares the wits out of the recipient). But a snippet of information about your previous work experiences or perhaps an interest you have that is likely to be shared with the recipient of your email could be a small change that might make for a notable difference when relationship building online.

Note also that it may not be enough to simply send a funny cartoon. The specific cartoon employed in these studies was one chosen not only because of its ability to raise a chuckle. It was also entirely consistent with the task that the parties were about to undergo—namely, a negotiation. As a result, when employing laughter as an engagement strategy, consider not just the likelihood that your attempt will raise a smile, but to what extent your communication is aligned to the subject or matter you are about to discuss. And remember that sometimes it might be just as effective to discard the idea of an email completely and engage in a little friendly face-to-face chitchat or make a call instead.

In a competitive market where businesses are looking for any small changes they can make to increase their response rates and engagement without costing the earth, Victor Borge’s point is a poignant one. When communicating with disparate groups, sometimes the closest point between two people is laughter—not just online but in face-to-face negotiations as well. For example, research conducted by Karen O’Quinn and Joel Aronoff found that negotiators who received a demand along with a joke (“Well, my final offer is $____, and I’ll throw in my pet frog”) conceded more financially than those who received the demand alone. But for those of you who are unwilling to part ways with your favorite amphibian just to close a deal, perhaps you could offer to throw in your favorite Dilbert cartoon instead.

A
s the Greek legend goes, the god Dionysus offered King Midas a reward of his choosing for acting kindly toward Dionysus’s friend. Midas requested that everything he touch turn to gold, a power that was immediately granted by Dionysus. Of course, we all know this is a fairy tale—objects can’t simply turn into gold because they’re touched.

Or can they?

Consumer researchers Joann Peck and Suzanne Shu believed that although physically touching a product might not exactly turn it into gold, it could very well increase its perceived value. Although this idea may not seem intuitively obvious—after all, think of how many retailers discourage touching of their products with “Please don’t touch” or “Touch only with your eyes” signs—Peck and Shu hypothesized that touching something can create an emotional connection with it. The researchers noted they were in good company in holding this belief:
Star Trek
’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard felt this way as well.

In one experiment designed to test this idea, participants playing the role of potential buyers were shown two products—a coffee mug and a Slinky toy. In the study, half the potential buyers were explicitly instructed to touch and feel the products but the other half were explicitly told not to touch them. Afterward each potential buyer was asked how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I feel like this is my Slinky/Mug,” “I feel a very high degree of personal ownership of the Slinky/Mug,” and “I feel like I own this Slinky/Mug.” They were also asked their opinion as to the value of both products.

The results clearly demonstrated that those participants who were able to touch the products reported a much higher positive emotional reaction to those products, and that tactile contact led to a greater sense of ownership. The combination of the higher positive emotions, coupled with the enhanced sense of ownership, increased those participants’ perceived values of the mug and the Slinky—typically by a third more than those who explicitly were told not to touch them. That’s a pretty significant upward shift for a small change that requires nothing other than to provide an opportunity for someone to touch what is on offer. Interestingly, the researchers also found a similar pattern of results with sellers as well—when selling items they had been given earlier, the sellers demanded higher prices for items they had touched than those they hadn’t.

This research is important for several reasons. As a consumer, it is important to understand and recognize the factors that affect our judgments and decisions. When a retailer asks us to touch or hold an item in our hands, its perceived value will automatically increase after doing so.

Similarly, a seller who arranges for potential buyers to feel more of a connection to the goods being sold by giving them the item to touch could be making a small change that leads to a big difference. For example, the packing for many of Paper Mate’s pens has a section of the package cut out, which allows prospective consumers to touch the pen; this not only enables potential customers to see how the pen feels, but also enhances the value of the product.

Supermarkets and food stores might also benefit from the value-enhancing qualities of touch. Some stores, for entirely understandable reasons related to good food hygiene, might frown on consumers who handle loose and unpackaged products such as fruits, vegetables, and bakery goods. However, in the knowledge that they will likely have to discard a certain amount of spoiled stock anyway, perhaps having “touching sections” that actively encourage customers to handle goods might be a potentially profitable thing to do.

In addition to the peddling of pens, peaches, and pumpernickel, the subtle but powerful persuasiveness of touch might enhance the value of your printed materials too. When submitting that report to a manager or tendering your proposal to a potential client, try to print off the document and hand it to them rather than send it electronically. Lecturers, workshop leaders, and corporate trainers who leave course materials on tables might instead be advised to hand materials directly to their students and delegates as they enter the room. To increase the perceived value of gifts and goodies provided by sponsors and given out at conferences and conventions, meeting and event managers might arrange for a selected item to be taken from the bag and personally handed over, thereby ensuring that not only is its value potentially enhanced but also that the chances of that item languishing in the bottom of a carry bag are eliminated.

But what about those situations where the ability to touch a product
before
purchasing it is limited? With increasing numbers of people turning to online environments to make their purchases, there are likely to be lots of potential customers who will never have the opportunity to touch your offerings before they get delivered to their door. Does this mean that you’ll have to give up on the idea of providing touch until Google invents a
Star Trek
–like transporter that delivers a product to your customer over the web so consumers can touch it before purchase?

Actually, no.

In their studies, Peck and Shu found that when a product was unavailable to touch, a different
SMALL
BIG procedure could be effective: Simply asking a customer
to imagine
touching the product was enough to increase perceived ownership and, consequently, its value.

However, it is also important to be aware of a crucial exception to this research. According to Peck and Shu, asking consumers to touch products is
only
beneficial if the products are either neutral or pleasant to touch.

Porcupine salesmen beware!