31 Oct, 2009
Subliminally Sold - Are You Being Manipulated Into Buying?
Posted by: Beach Reporter In: shopping
Just as I began reading New York Times best-selling author Lee Eisenberg’s book, “Shoptimism”, I began noticing how influenced I and most consumers are when about spending money and buying things. Subliminal messages–images shown so quickly that viewers don’t consciously see them–are most effective when they have negative words, according to the latest research. “DON’T buy that color, BUY this color, ” is a way consumers are subliminally steered into purchasing things and making choices that can include upsales to more expensive products, or one company’s brand and products over another company.
50 volunteers were shown a series of words on a computer screen for only a fraction of a second, much too briefly for the participants to consciously read them. As the words were displayed, the participants were asked to choose whether they were positive, negative or neutral. Their choices were most accurate when responding to negative words.
The findings that were published in “Emotion” journal have implications for the use of subliminal marketing in advertising. Negative words may have more of a rapid impact so that highlighting a competitor’s negative qualities may work on a subliminal level much more effectively than shouting about your own selling points.
