“Quick,” I thought among the hubbub of an 8am Waitrose. “There’s only one rice pudding left!”
The thing is, I almost never eat rice pudding, and I ended up throwing it away. My stockpiling instincts had been engaged by the thought that this might be the last chance I’d ever have to eat one.
There are a number of biases at play with stockpiling: we are hardwired to value something if it’s scarce, to follow the herd, and to insure against losses. There is also likely a subconscious need for hygiene expressed in the stockpiling of non-essentials like toilet paper and soap.
The good news is that these kinds of biases can be ‘counternudged’: when people are behaving irrationally, irrational measures can set them on the path to more constructive behaviours.
To start with, retailers ought not to put limits on the amount of items people can buy. Signs warning of item limits may actually make people think about stockpiling, in the same way research has shown ‘no smoking’ signs can increase smoking. Furthermore, the three-item limit might act as a purchase anchor, increasing the number of units bought by people who might otherwise buy only one.
Instead, three principles can get people to buy less.
The first is physical unavailability. Consumers are all cognitive misers with limited attention spans – and therefore, the easier something is to notice, reach and buy, the more likely they are to buy it. To dissuade panic buying, supermarkets can make products harder to buy by, for example, putting them on the bottom shelf, or even requiring customers to ask staff to fetch them from the stockroom. Anything that will make products harder to buy will help save supplies – without denying people their right to purchase. Reducing the number of people allowed in-store at any one time – and therefore forcing queues and delays – is a good example of this in action.
The second is valueless perceptions. It would be unethical and perhaps illegal to raise prices in the current climate – but there is a lot of flexibility with the framing of the price. Supermarkets can be put people off stockpiling goods by making them seem dearer using principles like: introducing a cheap anchor price to make the sale price seem worse value (eg, something like ’Next week £1.80, Now £3.20’); being sure to include zeroes to make prices seem bigger (eg, £5.00 rather than £5); and emphasising the £ symbol to make the psychological pain of paying salient.
The third is shaming. When we feel we are being watched, we tend to be on our best behaviour. Supermarkets could simply install pictures of other people, or perhaps mirrors, at self-checkouts in order to encourage shopping that is more responsible and less self-interested.
Brands and marketeers – myself included – have been applying nudges for personal gain for decades. In this time of crisis, let’s turn the tables and use these principles to make sure everybody has enough to eat.
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