It’s a Heuristics thing!

With a deluge of information coming our way, our minds have adapted to an easier approach for making decisions. Heuristics are simple, efficient rules which we often use to form judgments and to make decisions. They are effectively mental short cuts that will involve giving priority to one aspect of a complex problem while completely overlooking other aspects. While they might help us in some circumstances but they are the primary source of deviations from logic, probability and rational choice theory.

Being aware about the heuristics that we use for ourselves can help us figure out why we sometimes end up making decisions which are not rational. These decisions can be about what we buy, what we eat, what sports we choose to follow, who we choose to be friends with etc and its actually fun to see how heavily coded our minds are and how we will unflinchingly choose not the logically best option but what seems to be the best option through our lens of our biased perceptions.

As few examples of some common types of heuristics used by marketers are:

Affect: When a particular emotion is evoked for a while to draw the other person into a decision. Evoking happy feelings by using images or lightening the mood of the shopper using humor just before they are directed to the payment portal is an example. It is to make them feel better about spending money.

(See how happy people are shown, making the purchase!!)

Available: When the mind refers to the most available information, our assumptions based on our most common experiences in the past. We associate people with eccentric hair colors, extensive tattoos and piercings to be member of a cult or a rock music band while someone who dons a white coat is assumed to be a doctor.(In most advertisements health advise is always given by a person in a white coats…actors in white coats will recommend to you everything from toothpaste to floor cleaners)

Representative: Again widely used by advertisers because they know that for your mind a single thing represents a certain other ten things which in reality do not always come along as a package. A good smelling deodorant just makes you smell good but what is represents is a complete package which includes a better social life, a better chance of attracting partners, becoming a more interesting personality and what not!

Halo Effect: Makes us unrealistically idolize certain people and brands. We can ever imagine our favorite movie star in an advertisement endorsing medicated shampoo for hair lice (dandruff may be!).May be the reason why people feel so disappointed when Tiger Woods admitted sex addiction or Neil Armstrong was stripped of his honors.

Target Stimuli: This is the most easy to play with. A bunch of words are thrown at you and you automatically form a theme in your mind. The cultivated theme is called the subject being primed. Once you are primed you will automatically give the expected response. Some teachers while testing students use it to trick students into picking the wrong answer or the wrong theme.

Once primed "thanda" will automatically equal a Coca Cola drink

You can read more about other many types of heuristics here

Have heuristics ever led you to make an irrational shopping decision or a flawed assumption about a person or situation? As a marketer have you ever employed heuristics for a better response? Please share your experiences in the comments section.

(Disclaimer:All images used in this post are not my property)