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Monday, November 28, 2011

Can the Black Friday Phenomenon Be Explained by Science? What you missed this holiday break.


Today, as we've come to know it, is Cyber Monday: a day when all the stress and bad behavior exemplified last Friday gets channeled into people's Amazon accounts. This may leave you pounding your keyboard in frustration over that $10 you could have saved on an indestructible iPhone case. However, when you lay it out as simply money saved to time wasted online shopping, you may come out ahead. But what drives us into this craze in the first place? What about Black Friday, where hours in the cold and sometimes violent madness minimally pay off? Scientists have been working on this question for some time now. What is known is that the Black Friday sales mentality plays off of our psyche.

Consumer researchers have shown that perception is key when it comes to influencing purchases. A penny might be negligible when calculating our budgets, but marking a price down just one cent makes it a more desirable purchase, especially when it ends on a nine, such at $9.99 instead of $10. Some businesses even price their items oddly ($6.23) because data shows that consumers will purchase more if they think the store is giving them every tiny bit of value. As long as you convince the customer that they are saving by spending, your purchases will increase. This is the basic science of the deal.

However, in extreme cases like Black Friday, there must be more to it. Although consumer scientists can prove the reasoning for marketing techniques based on statistical data, explaining why we make those choices is harder to do scientifically. Other factors such as emotional involvement, tradition, fear, and competition have been recorded as reasons for shopping insanity. One team of researchers this year is teasing this apart by measuring physiological changes in the heat of the action.

Fifty consumers in large cities braved the crowds on Friday wearing special bracelets that detect microscopic changes in sweat.  These changes, along with movement and body temperature, correlate to various emotional responses. The bracelets, developed by the MIT media lab, will collect data on excitement and relaxation for a company called Shopper Sciences which hopes to improve sales for clients such as Coca-Cola and Hasbro. This study will also look at online shopping, which will allow scientists to monitor facial expressions through web cameras as well.

Even heightened levels of excitement cannot explain the bad behavior we witnessed on this and past Black Fridays, or can it? Some of the same emotional responses that create that shopper's high might be the ones that account for the escalating violence we have seen over the years. In 2010, a woman was arrested here in Madison, Wisconsin for threatening to shoot anyone who would not let her cut in line at Toys R Us. It was also the tragic year an employee was trampled to death by Walmart crowds. This year, nearly 30 people were injured around the country due to fights, crowd control, robberies, and one horrific incident where a woman protected her shopping cart by spraying those around her with pepper spray.

Stores designed to lengthen distance to exits, control for theft, and promote as much merchandise as possible are partially responsible for the problems we have observed. Although consumer research shows that these are smart choices for marketing, when mixed with a sense of competition, fear that you might miss out, and pushing and shoving, instincts kick in. These incidences are not distinct from what is seen when crowds at concerts or rallies get out of hand. Predicting how crowds behave and might react could be key to preventing future problems.

Crowd behavior is poorly understood and difficult to study. Scientists today are making headway using high tech gear and computer modeling. The well known Fruin model shows that when crowd density equals personal space, individual control is lost and the crowd behaves as a single entity. This was supported by a team at Arizona State University who developed a computer model populated with thousands of individual thinkers. What they saw was that even the smallest decisions of an individual, such as changing directions affected the entire crowd as a whole in waves. Another team led by Professor Keith Still also use other non-virtual techniques, such as pressure sensing jackets, to monitor crowd behavior.  Using this information to train employees and law enforcement may allow them to recognize patterns and speed up reaction times.

Although scientists might not have definitive answers for the chaos seen every year after Thanksgiving, new studies may improve how stores operate and how they keep the peace, a win-win for the shops and shoppers. So if you plan on jumping in on the sales madness this year, remember to go in with a plan, consider the real value of the product, and most importantly, keep calm.

References:
1.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203710704577054470345255202.html
2.THE CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF CROWD DISASTERS John J. Fruin, Ph.D., P.E. United States of America
3.http://www.science20.com/news_releases/syn_city_crowd_behavior_and_violence_tipping_points_get_numerical_model
4.http://crowdmodelling.com/

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Here's to a steady food coma recovery!

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