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8.1
Consumer Incentive Program Series
Designing Effective
Consumer Incentive
Programs
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FOCUS
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Information about consumer-based
motivational research.
By Rodger Stotz, CPIM, Maritz Inc., and Bruce Bolger, CPIM, Selling
Communications, Inc.
Consumer
Motivation
Consumer incentive programs are related not only to marketing, but
also to the field of consumer motivation. Consumer motivation looks
not only at incentives that can spur people to action, but to
psychological and emotional needs that can affect how people respond
to ads, packaging or other marketing programs, or to the actual
products and services being marketed.
Historical
Perspective
The field of motivational research burst onto the American scene in
the 1950s as a result of the work of a Viennese psychoanalyst, Dr.
Ernest Dichter, who developed a series of research methods for better
understanding consumer behavior. Using modified Freudian
techniques, he produced a variety of theories, including the concept
that the purchase of certain products could have links to sexual
symbolism. Before long, most ad agencies had hired psychologists,
and for a while the field of consumer motivation research played a key
role in advertising strategies.
Schiffman and Kanuk, the authors of the marketing textbook
Consumer Behavior, contend that while the motivational research field
no longer holds sway, various useful research tools, including
metaphor analysis, storytelling and picture drawing, can still help in
better understanding consumers.
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Consumer Incentive Program Series
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8.2
Three Critical
Human Desires In
Consumer
Incentive Program
Design
Other motivational concepts, such as the need for power, affiliation
and achievement, all have an impact on marketing to external
consumers, as well as to internal employees. Schiffman and Kanuk
cite the following three critical human desires that have a critical role
on the design of consumer incentive programs.
Power. Understanding the desire of people to feel control of their
surroundings can affect what types of incentives are selected in a
program or how they are marketed. Loyalty and customer recognition
strategies particularly address consumer desire for power.
Affiliation. The human desire for affiliation is addressed by marketers
each time they hold a consumer event or offer logoed merchandise.
Understanding the targeted audience will in great part dictate how well
your organization achieves the desired level of affiliation.
Achievement. The desire for achievement is tapped by marketers each
time they run some type of contest requiring great writing or other
skills, or when they use athletic marketing themes to support a
promotion.
While hoping to tap psychological and emotional desires to make their
promotions more successful, most users of consumer incentives focus
specifically on getting people to act; i.e., respond to an ad, pick up the
phone, go to a store or Web site or, best of all, buy. This narrow
definition favors tactics that address the most fundamental elements of
motivation by creating a “state of uncomfortable tension, which exists
as the result of an unsatisfied need,” according to Schiffman and
Kanuk. You want to get consumers to act? According to basic
motivational principles, create a need, a want, or a desire and an easy
means for people to satisfy it.
Evaluating
Consumer Program
Effectiveness
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Many elements of motivation remain difficult to measure, but
consumer incentives provide a relatively reliable means of evaluation.
Companies that regularly use consumer incentives, including airlines,
hotels, cereal makers, fast food companies, etc., know these programs
work by seeing what happens when they withhold the incentive.
Consumer Incentive Program Series
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8.3
Time and time again, marketers find that consumer incentives can
provide an extra want, need or desire that will result in a behavior
change, which is why consumer incentives remain prevalent during
good times or bad. But, just as in the case of employee and channel
motivation, the behavior change created by an effective consumer
incentive program can quickly backfire if other expectations get
frustrated by an undesirable product or shopping experience.
In fact, many marketers overlook the flip side of motivation: the
frustration that often results when people feel they have failed or have
been fooled. Whenever marketers run the deceptive promotion that
makes the incentive sound better than it is, they run the risk of hurting
business, by causing anger and even aggression (i.e., fierce complaints
to the company or friends), or simply the loss forever of a customer
who goes silently away.
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Consumer Incentive Program Series
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8.4