If you find out that goods or service are made by a socially vulnerable group of citizens (physically impaired persons, large families, etc.), how will it impact your choice of products?
Diagram 2. Impact of the factor of «social» goods on making a consumer decision, %
We will try to figure out reasons, why a choice of «social» goods is yet attractive for a consumer, from the point of view of the psychological theory of decisions.
Lets start from the point that the situation of choice itself intrinsically and subjectively is a task that is not always a pleasant one. We say "burden of choice" in a situation when we have to make an important decision. Although, a pleasant for us choice a choice of a new dress, for instance induces tension (what if the dress I buy not the best one and later I will find a cheaper and better one?), let alone a choice of a new flat, profession, and on top of that, a life partner. All these situations require costs of our mental resources and besides go along with a fear to make a wrong choice.
Fortunately, the human mind has a great resource of defense and one of the principle of its functioning is "saving mental energy". At every particular moment, a person is exposed to a wide variety of stimulus, a part of which we even do not aware of (e.g. clothes we are in, noise of the air conditioner or outside the window stimulus that we will not aware of until they, for one reason or another, turn out to be in the field of our voluntary or involuntary (e.g. as a result of loud sound outside the window). One of the manifestations of this saving principle besides is a series of phenomena at the level of decision making. Thus, to reduce a "subjective discomfort" that arises in a situation when we need to make a choice from several alternatives, we use a principle of the alternative ranking, which allows us to distinguish generalized clusters of choice options, while the larger the alternative set is, the more important role this principle plays. Or another principle heuristics of "complexity reduction" of alternatives: a subject makes a choice on the basis of considerably less number of alternatives, than those he or she can distinguish. Indeed, if we imagine a number of choice options we can make (e.g. there are as many as several millions of potential life partners, if we assume gender, age and marital status; it is hard to imagine if we wanted to make a choice on the basis of meeting all the potential partners), it becomes obvious that we make a choice on the basis of far from all possible options. Moreover, Yu. Kozeletsky in his studies proved that people in the situation of decision making take into account 3 to 6 hypotheses at the same time when making a choice, and they assume these hypotheses as mostly credible and ignore the others. Almost magical "7+/-2" the formula that describes many psychological phenomena (e.g. capacity of our recent memory, attention). The same data were obtained in studies of other scientists.
Nevertheless, whats with purchasing of social goods? One can note, that for the situation of making a consumer decision all conditions for occurrence of the described phenomena are available, and they allow to facilitate the task of decision making for a subject. Searching for a suitable choice option depending on a type of goods category induces tension to a greater or lesser degree. In conditions of the developed market, the amount of consumer alternatives can achieve hundreds or even thousands, which makes it impossible to resolve the task of choice by analysing every particular alternative, thus it impels the subject to opt for simple heuristic rules. On the basis of these functioning heuristics, the availability of the "social brand" becomes one of the factors that facilitate choosing. In the variety of possible consumer alternatives, this encourages a relief from subjective discomfort, distinguishing one or limited number of options from this variety. The «social» alternative of choice gains specific features, while becoming a psychological language a part of psychological situation of a subject.
We will endeavor to pinpoint the basic heuristics which potentially influence the consumer behavior in case of choosing social goods. So, the first heuristic we simplify a task of choice for the consumer by suggesting an "added social value" as a criterion, «two-in-one» as we described in the beginning. If in this case we like chosen «social» goods, there are all conditions for generation of loyalty to this brand and this purchase can become a regular purchase (made on a regular basis, in case of necessity of buying this category of goods).
Another heuristic is the «familiarity», which is the primary mechanism of influencing the consumer choice by the advertising. In case when all the products in a certain range have similar properties, the chances of choosing the products more familiar to the consumer are greater. It is reflected by the following principle: "If of two similar goods you have heard something about one and nothing about the other, choose the one you know". This heuristic is possible in the scope of social goods, i.e., when the consumer is familiar with the category of "social entrepreneurship" and sees the goods produced by a social entrepreneur. Or, for example, the consumer has heard about the trading company "More than buying" and sees the goods with this label. So far it is too soon to speak of the massive popularity of the social entrepreneurship, but in the future it may also become an important choice factor.
"Origin dependency" is another heuristic determining the consumer choice process which is interesting in the context of the «social» aspect. The point of this phenomenon is that what matters to the consumer is the source of resources and the "item of expenditure" on which he spends them. If a consumer thinks about the fact that he or she has already spent a certain amount on one expense item, the amount he or she is still willing to spend on the same expense item within a certain period of time becomes significantly less. The greater likelihood of purchasing goods in a different category than in the category of recently purchased goods is an example of this heuristic demonstration. The conditions for the development of such heuristic arise in case of the «social» goods. For example, if the consumer has already bought (for instance, at the fair) some goods (for example, gingerbread popular goods at fairs in Gorodets or Kungur, where in 2017 there were "Rallies of social entrepreneurs"), then the probability that again having met at the same fair not just gingerbread, but "gingerbread made by social entrepreneur", he will also buy them, will increase. In this case, subjectively, the "item of expenditure" changes not the gingerbread, but the "good deed".
The availability of the "social brand" becomes one of the factors that facilitate choosing. In the variety of possible consumer alternatives, this encourages a relief from subjective discomfort.
Another heuristic is "insurance against a wrong choice," which also reduces the discomfort and difficulty of choice: "Even if it turns out to be bad (bad taste, will break quickly, etc.) I still did good thing," which means "there is no need to regret the buy".
Supposedly, the "holy grail" of sales has been found. Just make your goods «social» (even the level of «label» will be enough) and the love of the consumers is assured. But in fact, this is not true. Goods quality and its price, even in case of «social» goods have critical factors of the consumer choice (if we are not talking about "charity," which was mentioned above). Moreover, there are various strategies for promoting social goods, establishing the balance of «marketing» and «charity». And this is another important issue that we will try to address in our future publications.