Fourteen Lectures on Consumer Psychology

Chapter 16 Instinct and Sales (2)
Of course, an adult sometimes suppresses his instinctive movement, and he will not use the blood that collects in his legs to escape, but he cannot prevent this instinctive movement from happening.If the above reasoning about the theory of evolution is completely correct, we can re-examine the instinctive movement, even if it is very abstract to the individual, from a real and clear perspective.From this point of view, the emergence and development of human instinctive activities are all due to some special reasons or situations.

5. The last characteristic that defines instinctive activity is that it is often accompanied by strong emotions.When human beings perform instinctive activities, they invest more emotion than when they perform simple reasoning and exercise habitual actions.This was mentioned in Lecture 5 when we talked about sensations.Here is a counterpoint to be made, that instinctual behavior accompanies emotion.

Perhaps it should be more precisely said that all instinctive actions are accompanied by emotions, and these emotions are many and varied, not associated with just one emotion.Every great instinctual act is accompanied by a specific emotion, an emotion.For example, running away instinctively because you are afraid of something, this instinctive activity involves many movements, such as large or small movements to speed up the escape speed, fast moving legs, and quick movement of blood to the thighs. The rapidly beating heart, the rapid panting in order to provide more oxygen to the blood, the accelerated glands in order to inject a lot of hormones that can burst into the blood in an instant, etc.

This sequence of coordinated actions is called an instinctive pattern of activity.The emotion of fear is accompanied by the behavior of fleeing, which is the behavior pattern of fleeing.Along with aggressive instinctual behavior is the emotion of anger.The emotion that accompanies the instinctive pattern of activity to protect young individuals is known as parental love.Each of the different modes of instinctive activity is accompanied by unique emotions.

The unclassifiability of instinctual activity

We'd love to make a list of all human instincts, but to be honest, it's very difficult to do.The environment that causes instinctive activities is very complex, and at the same time there is not only one kind of instinctive activity that is aroused; the result is that various instinctive activities are mixed together, and it is difficult to distinguish a single, clear instinctive activity.

In addition, in the process of growth, due to the accumulation of one's own experience, acquired skills, especially the influence of habits, various instinctive activities of individuals show a tendency to interpenetrate.Therefore, it is rare to see only one instinctive activity in a person.No one can tell how many instinctual activities are exhibited in a person at any one moment.

While it is impossible to provide a complete list of human instinctive activities, it is possible to write some obvious instinctual behaviors with specific names, such as self-defense (divided by purpose into exercise, obtaining food, finding shelter, playing, sleeping), reproduction ( Including shy avoidance and bold seduction), protection of young, flight, aggressiveness, disgust, etc.

According to the different purposes of instinctual activities, rather than the different characteristics of each activity, instinctive activities can be roughly divided into three categories: ①Instinctive activities produced by individuals to maintain life and live better, such as running away, fighting, saving and curious. ②Instinctive behaviors to ensure the continuation of the race and family, such as mating and protecting young members of the family. ③Instinctive activities for the benefit of the tribe and society, such as flocking and imitation.There are many instinctual activities which can be classified into several classes, and in fact neither the second nor the third can exist without the first.This classification contains most of the instinctual activities and can be used in reality.

The Application of Instinctive Activities in Sales

When studying the characteristics of instinctual activity, we found that instinctive behavior in adults is often modified by learned behavioral influences.There are two reasons for a consumer to produce a certain behavior. This behavior either comes from his own experience or from the experience of the population.There is no difference in the specific human behaviors that arise from these two different causes.However, the behavior generated by the second reason is more operational for the salesman, who can induce consumers to buy goods by appealing to this instinctive behavior of consumers.The second category of instinctive activities has the following functions.

1. Relative certainty.Instinctive activities are originally the habits imprinted on the ancestors more than thousands of years ago, and they are indelible natures for individuals.Under the right conditions, humans show it unabashedly.Rational activity is based on personal experience, which is not stable in a broad sense, nor is it so fixed and unchangeable.

In addition, because instinctual activities are the behavioral characteristics of every member of the population, when a salesman uses a certain technique in the sales process, whether the sales technique is useful or not, and what reaction the crowd will get, he has a certain feeling in his mind. An explicit estimate of expectations.

The same cannot be said with certainty about the effectiveness of sales techniques designed for rational activity.People may be reluctant to stop and listen to a salesman because of their ingrained prejudices and ignorance.A pitch that works well for one person may not work for another.A sales pitch aimed at visceral activity works equally well for an individual or a group of people.For example, an ad targeting a better life for children elicits a strong reaction from all parents.

2. Cause consumers to respond positively.Humans respond faster to instinctive activities than to rational ones.This is because there is a fixed shortest route for the nerve impulses of instinctive activity to reach the brain.By contrast, the nerve impulses for rational behavior sparked by a salesman are about to climb mountains.It has to pass through the human sensory organs before reaching the nerve center of the brain.After the brain receives the signal, it will not take action immediately. The brain has to measure the environment and situation of the individual, and then make a behavioral response after judging the degree of the individual's involvement in the event and other factors.The time to make a decision to act may take an hour, a day, a week, a month or even a year.In instinctive activities, the path of nerve signal transmission has long existed, and it is shorter than the general transmission path, so almost at the moment when the brain receives the signal, the individual will have an action response.

3. Instinctive activities are full of emotion.A final advantage of visceral activity is that it is closely related to a variety of emotions.For example, if an evangelical pastor preaches to his potential followers with reason, he will find awe (if not lethargy) in their faces, but no enthusiasm.But when he picks up the magic wand of emotion and speaks passionately, it will resonate more with the audience.Salesmen who want to influence others to buy their products can learn a lot from evangelical ministers.Because, pastors and salesmen have a common mission - to guide the behavior of believers and consumers.So, they can use the same psychological methods to achieve this.

At the end of this lecture, we pointed out that there are two kinds of behavior—instinctive and rational.In fact, these two concepts are just two categories that humans have distinguished for better research on this issue.In real life, human behavior can contain these two kinds of activity factors at the same time.The purpose of comparing these two behaviors is to draw a conclusion that it is easier for salesmen to achieve the same goal if they focus on using human instinctive activities to sell products than through human rational activities.

summary
This lecture completes the discussion of the genetic nature of human beings, the instinctive activities that exist in the mind of every consumer.Instinctive activity is difficult to analyze because it is always accompanied by many abstract and complex acquired behavior activities.In addition, the age of instinctive behavior is very far away from us now, and the reasons for their generation are very vague and difficult to understand for people living in modern times. This situation also makes it difficult to study it.But these inherited instinctive activities are valuable in sales.Instinctive activities are solidified in the human brain, and have universality (every individual in the population will express them), timeliness and strong emotions. Applying the above characteristics of instinctive activities to sales will achieve twice the result with half the effort.

(End of this chapter)