How Professional Marketers Manipulate Customers Into Buying More Than They Really Need free essay sample

We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly. (For instance, we dont know how much a six-cylinder car is worth, but we can assume its more expensive than the four-cylinder model). And that’s how marketers manipulate us. In this case, we may not have known whether the Coke at 12k was a better deal than the Burger option at 22k. But we certainly knew that the Burger-and-Coke option for 22k was better than the Burger option at 22k. In fact, we could reasonably deduce that in the combination package, the Coke is FREE. Person 2: Most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context. We dont know what kind of racing bike we want—until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We will write a custom essay sample on How Professional Marketers Manipulate Customers Into Buying More Than They Really Need? or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page We dont know what kind of speaker system we like—until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We dont even know what we want to do with our lives—until we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative, and thats the point. In the case, the decision between the Coke-only and Burger-only options would take a bit of thinking. Thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant. So the M D’s marketers offered us a no-brainer: relative to the burger-only option, the burger-and-coke option looks clearly superior. LET ME OFFER you this visual demonstration of relativity. As you can see, the middle circle cant seem to stay the same size. When placed among the larger circles, it gets smaller. When placed among the smaller circles, it grows bigger. The middle circle is the same size in both positions, of course, but it appears to change depending on what we place next to it. This might be a mere curiosity, but for the fact that it mirrors the way the mind is wired: we are always looking at the things around us in relation to others. We cant help it. This holds true not only for physical things—toasters, bicycles, puppies, restaurant entrees, and spouses—but for experiences such as vacations and educational options, and for ephemeral things as well: emotions, attitudes, and points of view. Person 3: CAN WE DO anything about this problem of relativity? The good news is that we can sometimes control the circles around us, moving toward smaller circles that boost our relative happiness. If we are at our class reunion, and theres a big circle in the middle of the room with a drink in his hand, boasting of his big salary, we can consciously take several steps away and talk with someone else. If we are thinking of buying a new house, we can be selective about the open houses we go to, skipping the houses that are above our means. If we are thinking about buying a new car, we can focus on the models that we can afford, and so on. We can also change our focus from narrow to broad. Let me explain with an example from a study conducted by two brilliant researchers, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Suppose you have two errands to run today. The first is to buy a new pen, and the second is to buy a suit for work. At an office supply store, you find a nice pen for $25. You are set to buy it, when you remember that the same pen is on sale for $18 at another store 15 minutes away. What would you do? Do you decide to take the 15-minute trip to save the $7? Most people faced with this dilemma say that they would take the trip to save the $7. Now you are on your second task: youre shopping for your suit. You find a luxurious gray pinstripe suit for $455 and decide to buy it, but then another customer whispers in your ear that the exact same suit is on sale for only $448 at another store, just 15 minutes away. Do you make this second 15-minute trip? In this case, most people say that they would not. Person 4: But what is going on here? Is 15 minutes of your time worth $7, or isnt it? In reality, of course, $7 is $7—no matter how you count it. The only question you should ask yourself in these cases is whether the trip across town, and the 15 extra minutes it would take, is worth the extra $7 you would save. Whether the amount from which this $7 will be saved is $10 or $10,000 should be irrelevant. This is the problem of relativity—we look at our decisions in a relative way and compare them locally to the available alternative. We compare the relative advantage of the cheap pen with the expensive one, and this contrast makes it obvious to us that we should spend the extra time to save the $7. At the same time, the relative advantage of the cheaper suit is very small, so we spend the extra $7. Person 5: This is also why it is so easy for a person to add $200 to a $5,000 catering bill for a soup entree, when the same person will clip coupons to save 25 cents on a one-dollar can of condensed soup. Similarly, we find it easy to spend $3,000 to upgrade to leather seats when we buy a new $25,000 car, but difficult to spend the same amount on a new leather sofa (even though we know we will spend more time at home on the sofa than in the car). Yet if we just thought about this in a broader perspective, we could better assess what we could do with the $3,000 that we are considering spending on upgrading the car seats. Would we perhaps be better off spending it on books, clothes, or a vacation? Thinking broadly like this is not easy, because making relative judgments is the natural way we think. Can you get a handle on it? I know someone who can. He is James Hong, cofounder of the Hotornot. com rating and dating site. (James, his business partner Jim Young, Leonard Lee, George Loewenstein, and I recently worked on a research project examining how ones own attractiveness affects ones view of the attractiveness of others. ) For sure, James has made a lot of money, and he sees even more money all around him. One of his good friends, in fact, is a founder of PayPal and is worth tens of millions. But Hong knows how to make the circles of comparison in his life smaller, not larger. In his case, he started by selling his Porsche Boxster and buying a Toyota Prius in its place. 4 I dont want to live the life of a Boxster, he told the New York Times, because when you get a Boxster you wish you had a 911, and you know what people who have 911s wish they had? They wish they had a Ferrari. Thats a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.

7 things to do if you want to work abroad

7 things to do if you want to work abroad There are a number of ways to get a job overseas, but most of them require lots of planning. Before you hop a plane to Bali or Paris to scout local job opportunities on your own, there a few factors and opportunities to consider to help you get the most out of working abroad. 1. Start your job search before you go abroadWhile it may seem adventurous or romantic to go exploring the world, there’s a lot of research that has to go into creating a financially feasible plan. Landing a job is different than bumming around Europe with a backpack. While it can have similar benefits like language and cultural immersion, finding short-term and long-term work is much different than your average vacation. It may be as simple as defining your search delimiters on the right job site, to much more targeted, like seeking out the job ads that are in local news websites from your desired location or networking among friends and alumni organizations. Depending on your financial situation and ult imate goals for working abroad, lining up the job beforehand is almost always better than going broke for a month while you try to find opportunities locally.2. Nail down all paperwork well in advanceThere’s one tricky thing you don’t worry about in your average job search in your home country: work permits. Technically, you can just show up and live for a few weeks in another country, but if you find a job, you’ll need to know how to get a work permit. In many countries the work permit application may need to be approved before you arrive. Oftentimes a company procures a work permit for you for a particular job. You may also need to have a residency permit. Thus, changing jobs while you’re overseas comes with an added complication: new work permit applications. There are also different types of visas, like a working holiday visa (for those between the ages of 18 to 35) and temporary work visas which are offered to American citizens by some countries like Canada and the UK for several months. Whether you’re considering long-term or short-term work, it’s best to set up your work permits before you pack up and move – even before you buy a plane ticket (because your plane ticket can be revoked without the proper documents set in place.)3. Know you might have to deal with low-paid workThe tradeoff, for most overseas opportunities, is of course money. There are countless opportunities for volunteering and internships world-wide with various reputable organizations. Students can often take advantage of internships during study abroad programs. Joining the Peace Corps, an another example, will take you places and use your skills to serve an impoverished community abroad. This is good experience to broaden your horizons and for your resume, but this type of opportunity is one you have to weigh against your current financial stressors. The Peace Corps provides language training, cultural immersion by living with a host f amily, a monthly living allowance and paid airfare. There is also no age limit to joining the Peace Corps, but you must be over 18.4. Brush up on your teaching skillsYou may have hated high school English but being able to teach English is one of those â€Å"needed skills† for many countries when you’re applying for a work visa. If you don’t want to teach long-term but do want to remain in a foreign country, you can consider a teaching job as your foot in the door to find other local job opportunities. There are many teaching placement programs that can get you started, though some require prior experience.5. Consider global company opportunitiesEven applying for a position at a global company could get you to the place you want to be eventually. This is perhaps the lengthiest way to find a job overseas, but also one of the most financially stable. Search for travel opportunities within your current organization. Business trips are a short-term way to get you to feed the travel bug, get paid to do it, and not worry about establishing residency in a foreign country. But you never know when your organization may be opening new positions overseas. Keep an eye out for these internal hiring opportunities.6. Find a job that will always go abroadIf you’re just starting in your career or looking to change careers to one that brings you more travel opportunities, there are a number of fields that offer the travel-driven a regular influx of travel opportunities. Jobs in tourism and leisure, travel writing, and working for an international airline are perhaps the most obvious. But there are other less-obvious choices that require you to work globally like a job in geophysics, archeology, and many government jobs in foreign affairs.7. Study up on your potential new cityDiving into a new culture can be exciting, but you should definitely try to learn a bit before you go. Brush up on local politics, read cultural histories, try to learn from a ph rasebook, and get a sense of the local customs. If you’re looking for a particular metro area, research what potential companies you could work for in the area. Any new job will have its own new â€Å"culture,† but working abroad may bring new facets you haven’t anticipated. If you’re primarily motivated to work abroad by a spirit of learning and adventure, then you’re already in the right spirit.