Have you ever gone shopping, set a maximum budget for yourself, and then went way over that budget? I once went to my favorite clothing store with the goal of buying a pair of pants and a shirt. I had a maximum budget of 100 euros in mind, and since I had other things to do that day, I didn’t want to spend more than half an hour on it. I ended up leaving the store two hours later with two pairs of pants, three shirts, a pair of socks, and a brand new suit. Total cost: 411 euros.
When I was outside again, I realized that something had not gone according to plan. But what? I had made clear agreements with myself and I am usually not so rebellious that I go against agreements. So I started investigating. After having been in the books for a while, I came to the conclusion that I and everyone around me have a second person in my head who pretends to be an accountant. Whether it will be a deal or no deal could depend on this inner accountant.
Don't worry, this isn't a bad attempt to make the entire world population look crazy. Of course, there isn't really a second person in our heads. The imaginary accountant is actually a collection of thought patterns with which people organize their money, which sometimes don't make perfect sense. These thought patterns are scientifically called Mental Accounting (pdf). In this article, I'll introduce you to this accountant and give you four interesting characteristics that he has. With these, you can encourage your clients' accountants to buy your product.
You would expect that the income that comes in is seen as one budget. You get a certain amount of money every month and you have to make do with that. However, our imaginary bookkeeper is hong kong mobile number format not always very rational and that is why he does not see the income as one budget. One of his most important tasks is to divide the income into all kinds of pots. For example, people have a pot for groceries, a pot for holidays and many more of these pots in their heads. Each product usually falls into a certain pot from which it is paid.
Some of these pots are a bit more full than others. For example, there is more money in the pot for vacations than there is in the pot for lunch at work. The interesting thing about this is that the pot that your product falls under affects the amount of resistance someone will have to the purchase. For example, a product that costs 10 euros will cause less pain if it is paid for from a pot of 100 euros than from a pot of 15 euros.
The accountant is not always consistent
The interesting thing about this is that the accountant is not always consistent in determining which jar a product falls into. For example, a t-shirt will usually be paid for from the clothing jar. However, if you buy a t-shirt on vacation, your accountant will probably put this t-shirt in the vacation jar. Because there is more money in that jar, people will be more inclined to pay more money for that same t-shirt.
So if you can manage to get your product into a pot with a bigger budget, your customers will be inclined to pay more money for your product. How you do that, I can best illustrate with the example below from Booking.com.