Marketing Tricks

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Speaker 1: I work for the marketing department of a well-known retailer and I know how hard it is these days to sell things. Customers have become quite savvy and they've worked out what tricks we use to get them to buy more. The look of the shop premises isn't enough anymore. The tactics of, for example, putting some products by the till in the hope that the customers would buy them on impulse just before paying for the rest of their basket doesn't do the trick either. These days we're learning how to make use of eye-tracking technologies. It's a bit hit and miss at the moment but we're working on it. Imagine you pick up a bottle of perfume. Digital screens behind the bottle, which could read your eyes, would be activated and you would be seduced by the images that were flashed in front of you. The technology would recognise your age and gender so the images could get quite personalised. Wouldn't it be great?

Speaker 2: I understand that all kinds of marketing tactics are part and parcel of the retail business. But I think there should be limits to what they're allowed to do. Recently I learnt that companies sort of track down their potential customers by following their bank transactions, social media posts, mobile phone GPS signals and Google searches. Now I hear that marketing specialists are planning to use GPS location data to target us when we're actually walking past one of their shops. So we'll get a text message advertising the sale in that particular shop. Personally I have nothing against it, but the idea is going to spark off a lot of criticism among people who are already fed up with being hunted. I think companies can't just pick and choose any tactics they want without taking public opinion into consideration.

Speaker 3: I've been working as a shop assistant for a couple of years. I took on a job with a view to earning some extra money for my holiday and never thought I'd get to like it so much. The thing is, I can watch people and their reactions, and I can make them buy things, so I often feel like a psychologist. My favourite tactic is messing clothes up on display since it makes the items look more popular, as if lots of other customers had looked at them and touched them. They appear like a must-have, you see. I just love it when it works and you can see lots of people buying the same goods, only because they were displayed like that. I realise that it's a means of manipulation, but what isn't in the world of shopping?

Speaker 4: Have you heard of the book called The A to Z of Retail Tricks to Make You Shop? I only looked at its contents list and I knew I wanted to buy it and read it, because I'm sick and tired of being manipulated by the shops into buying things. The book lists various techniques used by stores to attract our attention, from the most obvious ones like music, scent or the chance to finger or squeeze everything, to the less obvious ones like using mirrors in the shop windows to make us stop, or the colour purple to prompt us to want to spend. I think everybody should read the book and the authorities ought to take action against such manipulation. It should be de-legalised because if it doesn't stop, it'll only lead to more consumerism and even more people in debt.