Holiday Shopping: Getting in the Mood

Evolving shopping habits and an increasingly multi-channel retail environment add an extra degree of challenge for retailers looking to exploit the annual shopping fest that is the holiday season. Making the most of it, says new research from academics from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, comes down to being sensitive to the states of consumers’ mind while they’ve got their wallets out.

Some highlights of their findings include:
• Market yourself sensitively. Subtle adaptations to the “fit” between shoppers’ prevailing moods and the seasonally flavoured marketing messages directed at them can boost customers’ likelihood to purchase by as much as 186 percent.
• Save the sales for January. Discounts and deals can actually work against the shopping instinct at this time of year by diminishing the celebratory mood of the season.
• Put a lid on the Christmas cheer. Overdoing the hype with lots of lights and piped-in sprightly carols can introduce unwelcome pressure to the retail space that works against their purpose. Mellow lighting, pleasant smells and gentler seasonal music — think The Nutcracker over Jingle Bells — will sooner put folks in a spending disposition.
• Be alive to opportunities for connection. Store managers are typically not so good at recognizing shoppers’ non-verbal signals about when they’re open to being chatted with, and so they bustle in with upselling efforts that risk turning customers off.
• Encourage physical contact. People are more inclined to buy products where they have an emotional and sensory bond with them, so retailers can stimulate sales by allowing customers to touch and squeeze their products. Further, incorporating more humanlike characteristics could further foster this bonding, leading to better sales. (Chalk one up for old-fashioned retail over digital on this one.)