Consumption Junction

The figure/ground illusion shows how we literally cannot see two different things in the same set of stimuli. This feature of psychology generalizes to how we see people.

...One of the interesting things about human social psychology is that, in many regards, we tend to over-simplify stimuli in our social worlds - seeing things that could be conceptualized as complex and nuanced as simple and categorical. For instance, in many ways, we divide people into the category of “on my team” or “not” per the powerful ingroup/outgroup phenomenon (Billig & Tajfel, 1973). Quickly and automatically, people divide folks into these categories - and research has shown that we treat people very differently if they are in our (psychologically constructed) group or not.

Most eight-year-olds are familiar with cooties: an imaginary infectious disease spread through proximity to children of the opposite sex. We eventually outgrow the silly idea.

But when it comes to the world of consumer products, fear of associating with the opposite sex, at least for some, never really goes away.

“You would be amazed to find how often we mislead ourselves, regardless of how smart we think we are, when we attempt to explain why we are behaving the way we do,” Dichter observed in 1960, in his book “The Strategy of Desire”. He held that marketplace decisions are driven by emotions and subconscious whims and fears, and often have little to do with the product itself. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Dichter saw human motivation as an “iceberg”, with two-thirds hidden from view, even to the decision-maker. “What people actually spend their money on in most instances are psychological differences, illusory brand images,” he explained.

At a time when national companies were aggressively jockeying for position among Americans—a suddenly cash-happy and acquisitive bunch—Dichter promised a way to influence consumers' brains. If shopping was an emotional minefield, then strategic marketing could be a gold mine for companies.

Between the late 1930s and 1960s Dichter became famous for transforming the fates of businesses such as Procter & Gamble, Exxon, Chrysler, General Mills and DuPont. His insight changed the way hundreds of products were sold, from cars to cake mix. He pioneered research techniques such as the focus group, understood the power of word-of-mouth persuasion and earned startling fees for his theories. By the late 1950s his global business reached an annual turnover of $1m ($8m today), and he enjoyed a reputation as the Freud of the supermarket age.

A July 2014 study indicates that reading printed circulars at home is the most popular way US grocery shoppers save cash. Half of all respondents did so before their last supermarket trip. Comparably, only 4.0% of shoppers found a promotion on social media.