Marketing to Wants vs. Shoulds

Posted by Andrew on September 5, 2007

Roger Dooley has an excellent post about marketing “wants” vs. “shoulds”.

Everyone is familiar with the want vs. should conflict. Do you order the loaded cheese fries as your side dish, or the steamed broccoli? You want the greasy fries, but you know you should order the broccoli. Do you cut the grass (should) or watch football (want)?

Roger references a research paper that explores the different ways of selling wants vs. shoulds. With respect to online marketing, it had the following advice:

The authors comment that online sellers and catalog merchants should be sure to take delivery time into account when promoting their merchandise - consumers are likely to order more want items if they are available for immediate delivery. On the other hand, they caution that customers will spend less overall the further in advance of delivery the order is placed.

Understand whether your product is a want or a should, and set it up for the proper buying behavior to maximize your sales.