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The basic principle with self-herding is that people don't know what they want very often. Figuring out our preferences is in fact very hard. If I ask you, "What is the best place to eat?" you have many choices. These are hard questions with lots of possible answers. They way we often answer these is by asking, "What have I done before? What I did before must have been a good decision, after all I wouldn't have made it if it wasn't a great decision, let me repeat it." We can consult our preferences or we can consult our memory. It turns out it's often easier to consult our memory.
What does it mean to marketers? To the extent that you can get people to behave one way there's a good likelihood that people will keep on doing that later. If you can remind people how they behaved, there's a good chance that they will keep on behaving that way. So the logic suggests that the efforts of marketing should be particularly concentrated when people make first decisions about the product, like people in college who are making first decisions for themselves. It could include product introductions. It could also include things that happen when there's a shift in the economy. The recession caused many people to reconsider their habits. (en) |
