Clever Business Secrets Subconsciously Tricking You

- You probably. know that businesses are always looking for ways. to get consumers like you to spend more money. From fancy packaging and snazzy logos, to beautiful settings and sleek online experiences. But what you don't know is that. businesses are using sneaky, subliminal techniques to get even more out of their customers,. (energetic upbeat music) without them ever realising it. So, lets expose some of the. smartest business secrets subconsciously tricking you. (upbeat music) The secret of the 99 cent effect. How much does one cent mean to you? Not a lot right, that, is unless you're trying to sell something, where just. one cent can be the difference between a sale and a lost opportunity. The 99-cent effect has been used for decades, and yet to this day it's one of the hardest tactics for customers to resist. A French study in 2008 showed. that changing the price of a pizza from 8 euros to 7.99 euros resulted in a 15% boost is sales. And if you take a look around. at the current retail market, you'll see that traditional dollar stores are slowly beginning to lose out. Take the UK for example,. which saw it's staple Pound World stores forced out. of business by 99p stores. So, if we're not concerned about the pennies, why does the 99-cent effect have a very clear hold on us? Some theories identify that. consumers tend to focus on the bigger denomination, which the dollar sign draws the eye to. So, $99.99 looks like a lot. less than just one cent off $100 because we're focused on. that first big number. This means business can exploit our focus the way their prices look, simply by taking one cent off the price. Next time you're looking at a 99-cent item, try and round up. The secret of surroundings. Have you ever been into. your favorite restaurant at different times of the day and noticed something feels peculiar? Good news, you're not going crazy. A little-known trick in. the restaurant industry is based around different, states of lighting and music, designed to make customers, either stay longer or move on. During the day the lights are usually bright to deal with the hustle, and bustle of busy people with places to be. But fast forward to the evening where people are trying to relax,, restaurants lower the lights to create a calm atmosphere and encourage people to stay that extra hour longer. But why do that? It's likely that they're hoping you'll order a few more items from the menu in that time. But what about fast food restaurants? Well that's even simpler. Bright lights and loud music, playing all day every day are designed to encourage customers to finish their meal quickly and move on so that even more customers can be served. Have you ever been in, line intending to sit down at your favorite busy fast food restaurant and thought, "I'll just get it to go"? You're their dream customer. Incredibly, a study was undertaken by Professor Brian Wansink, that proved reducing the lights and lowering music in a fast food restaurant actually encouraged people, to stay longer and eat less. Eat less? That's not what they want. Quickly, play "Despacito", again, but louder. However, music and lighting are only two parts of this equation. Ever noticed how when. you walk through a mall, you can't help but smell.

the beautiful aromas of a nearby perfume shop, or the sweet scent of cinnamon buns? Be under no illusion. That's all entirely on purpose, and it's called scent marketing. Stores tend to place their perfume counter right at the entrance, and bakery chain Cinnabon makes fresh buns every 30 minutes, because if you smell what they're selling you're more likely to be drawn in. It almost seems too simple to work, but science almost completely supports it, with one study finding that intent to purchase rose by 80% when scent marketing was used in major retailers. Even Disney is reported to. have used scent machines in the shrubbery of its theme parks to make its guests crave cotton candy, caramel apples, and popcorn. The secret of color. For most people, colors have a huge effect, on their perception. We intrinsically, associate different colors to different meanings thanks to evolution. Bright colors like red, orange and yellow usually alert us to something by grabbing our attention, but colors such as green and, blue are considered calming or safe as they're more natural. So how do businesses, use this to trick you? Well take as look at these logos. I said before we associate green to nature, health and growth, so this makes sense for companies, like Whole Foods Market, Tropicana, Starbucks, Heineken? Land Rover? Wait, BP? The same BP that was responsible, for Deepwater Horizon, one of the worst oil spills in history? Yeah, very natural indeed. How about blue? Synonymous with the sky and ocean, it's a color that science has linked to calming effects and feelings of trust. So which businesses would, want to capitalize on that? Intel, HP, Dell. You could see why these tech giants would want to be seen as dependable. But then there's Pepsi? Walmart? Facebook? I mean, come on, Facebook? They leaked over 419 million user records in 2019 alone. Maybe you should think twice before judging a book by its logo. But what's even more fascinating is that color psychology also seems to have an. effect on our appetite. The most popular theory going is that red really rev's up people's hunger. That's why lots of restaurants. have red interiors, and often use red checked tablecloths. So entering a restaurant with red branding should mean that customers are more hungry once the reach the counter, meaning they buy more food. It almost seems too simple. But if we take a look at popular restaurants with red in the logo, a pattern definitely seems to emerge. And according to the other, end of this spectrum, the color black is said to cause the appetite to diminish. This might explain why some of the most expensive 'gourmet' restaurants in the world have interior designs that use so many dark colors, decreasing your appetite. so you don't complain about the tiny portions you'll be served. The secret of zero cost. Have you ever spent more on products just to save a little on shipping? Or bought way more than you needed thanks to a deal that gave you an extra item for free? Yep, me too, as well as millions of other consumers around the globe. But how do we fall for, such easy traps that get us to buy more for something. that ultimately isn't free? Usually when we shop, we look at a cost-benefit difference, and chose products based on how big the resulting benefit is to us. But it's been proposed that free products skew our perception, as we see them as having much higher benefits than they really do. This allows businesses to manipulate prices and deals they tag on their items, as they're baiting consumers in with something free. The classic example in our modern world is free shipping, a concept that's probably most synonymous with the likes of Amazon. You think you're getting the best deal, but for 2018 Amazon had almost. $233 billion in net sales and over $220 billion in operating costs. But how much of that. did shipping cost them? $27.7 billion. That's not even 13% of their costs. So, all those extra items you bought to get that free shipping,, actually made them richer. The secret of hype. Black Friday is arguably the most famous shopping day of the year. Millions of people descend on the shops looking for the best bargain around, but is that really the case? Comparisons of item prices throughout the year show that, actually,, you can get better deals of up to 95% of products after the sales. And staggeringly, 61% are. cheaper before Black Friday. So how is it this festive free-for-all sees Americans dropping, over $90.14 billion in just a few short days? This is a classic case of hype promotion. Although many businesses run sales that they claim are the biggest sale of the year, Black Friday really began to ramp up when footage of people. fighting over products and trampling one another to get into stores was released on news

outlets and social media. As bad as that sounds, it, created positive feedback by indicating stock shortages. Year after year more videos were released. But as it's easy to, see, very few businesses put any protocols in. place to stop the madness taking over their stores. We can assume it's because. this absolute chaos is good for profits and. encourages more people to buy on Black Friday. The secret of FOMO. "Don't miss out." "Limited time only." "Get it before it's too late." They all sound familiar right? Limited rewards artificially induce a fear of missing out in us. One way this is being used is on booking and ticket sites. You know that little, pop up you see that says "Only 1 ticket left," or "Booked 20 times in the last 36 hours"? That isn't there to keep you updated, it's to pressure you into booking on the spot. And the worst part? Those figures are rarely even real. Just take a look at Booking.com, a site where you can book everything from hotels. to holiday activities. In 2019 a UK investigation, found that the site was actually duping its customers. Claims of only one room left on our site came up bogus on around, 50% of its bookings. It's a pressure selling tactic gone viral. And in a world where time-based social media, has taken center stage, promotions on platforms such as Instagram Stories and Snapchat add an extra. level of fear to FOMO. People don't want to miss out on mass shared social experiences. A good example of this is. social media mogul Kylie Jenner and every product release she's created. Websites carrying the items, crash due to the amount of people attempting to purchase, which spurs even more online panic and the products sell out within seconds. Why wouldn't you create enough, to supply the full demand, especially when you know, the size of your audience? The reason is because. this creates another level of positive feedback for the next product launch. Just like Black Friday, the chaos that surrounds a product that's limited ultimately, feeds back into its value, making you want it all the more. The secret of casinos. The gambling business. is a game of its own. But it's easy to say that the casinos are the kings of subconscious trickery. Back in 2013, The University, of Las Vegas found that the 23 Vegas Casinos bringing in over $72 million a year made an average of $630,000 a day per casino. Most of us are smart enough to know the odds of winning big at the casino are slim. So how on earth are we. spending so much money in these black or red businesses? For a start, the progression of time is hidden. Those of you who have. been in big name casino have probably noticed the lack of windows, and the lack of clocks, and the lack of bright lighting. These haven't been forgotten,, this is on purpose. Casinos don't want you knowing how long you've spent with them. Is it dawn or is it dusk? If you loose track of time, it's more money for them. Also, have a look at their designs. These buildings are specifically. built like labyrinths, with all their amenities located near the center. And considering casinos offer patrons free drinks, if they're playing, it's a much more enticing to just stay put. All of these elements combined. give you a business model that makes it that much harder to leave, meaning you can end up. gambling all day long. So, have you ever fallen for one of these tricks? Which one surprised you the most? And if you know of any others, let me know in the comments below. Thanks for watching..