“It’s Not the Online Coupons. It’s the Psychology.” plus 1 more |
| It’s Not the Online Coupons. It’s the Psychology. Posted: 08 Feb 2011 07:09 PM PST You might think that this column is about Groupon.com, the white-hot Web site whose coupons save you 50 to 90 percent at local businesses. But it's not. It's about psychology. Each day, Groupon offers for sale a deep-discount coupon from a business in your town. It might be a $25 coupon that buys you a $50 bike tune-up, or a $40 coupon for a $90 massage, or $25 for $100 worth of fitness classes. The coupons aren't actually distributed until a critical mass of people (50, for example) have clicked "Buy." After all, shopkeepers can't afford discounts that steep unless there's something in it for them. If not enough people express interest, the deal dies. No coupons are issued, and nobody's out a cent. Groupon is, therefore, a huge win-win-win. You save eyebrow-raising amounts of money. Local businesses pick up a landslide of new customers overnight without doing a lick of marketing on their own (a Phoenix aquarium, for example, sold 10,000 tickets in 24 hours). And Groupon collects half the money from those coupons. No wonder it became profitable after only seven months. Now, this concept — Internet-organized group buying — has been tried many times before. Remember MobShop? Mercata? LetsBuyIt? They all worked, in principle, the same way. But Groupon is suddenly everywhere you look — in the headlines, on Facebook, in dinnertime conversations. The company says that it operates in 175 North American cities and 500 overseas, has 54 million members and has saved them $1.6 billion so far. In fact, Groupon is the fastest-growing Web company in history, having attained a $1.5 billion value in only 18 months. (On the other hand, not all of the dinnertime conversation about Groupon is positive. The company's SuperBowl TV ads last weekend backfired. One seemed to belittle the oppression of Tibetans under Chinese rule — "The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry!"— and struck many viewers as juvenile and insensitive.) Frankly, I couldn't understand the big deal about Groupon. Why is it such a superstar when so many competitors labor in obscurity? The answer: clever psychology. First of all, Groupon's sales staff tries to cultivate deals that suit the audience in each city. If you're in San Francisco, you get offers for Segway tours of vineyards, flying lessons and skateboarding gear. In New York City, you're more likely to see huge discounts on music lessons, theater tickets and interesting restaurants. In most cities, you're likely to spot lots of deals for spas and cosmetic surgery, which hints at the upscale female customers who constitute Groupon's biggest buyers. In suburban Connecticut, where I live, I saw offers like "$10 for $20 worth" of Italian food at a restaurant nearby, "$15 for $30 worth of dry cleaning," and "$10 for $20 worth" of goods at Barnes & Noble. Since that's all stuff I'd buy anyway, I took the plunge. I bought the Barnes & Noble coupon and the restaurant coupon. A few hours later, I received my coupons by e-mail. They pointed out that I could avoid printing the coupons if I used the free Groupon app for iPhone or Android phones. At the bookstore, I picked out a couple of books totaling $23. I showed my phone to the cashier, who had been trained to enter the Groupon codes. I was the ninth person that day to cash in. I paid the $3 overage, and that was it. I loved it. I'd just gotten $10 worth of books free. It almost felt as if I'd shoplifted. More psychology, of course. It's absurd that I should have felt so giddy. I mean, is saving $10 such a landmark event? The last time you bought a house, a car or even a night at a hotel, did you haggle for another $10 off? You probably could have gotten it. But you didn't. Somehow, though, in the Groupon context, it feels like a steal. There's something about the simple phrase, "$10 for $20 worth of stuff" that gets you. Furthermore, your coupon is good for anything in the store. It's not the same as a Half-Off Sale, where the store chooses what goods to discount. That "tipping point" business — the minimum number of takers an offer has to have before it becomes valid — is part of the psychology, too. Sure, this element was created to protect the merchant's interests. But let's face it, the tipping-point requirement adds a certain thrill to the proceedings. You're invested in the outcome. Even the scarcity of deals — one each day — plays on your feelings. It adds to that sense of exclusivity and of serendipity. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: February 11, 2011 An earlier version of this column misidentified a defunct group-buying site. It was Mercata, not Mercato. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Child soldier trauma in Uganda shares similarities with Northern Ireland Posted: 11 Feb 2011 05:13 AM PST ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2011) — Psychology students at Queen's University have discovered similarities between child soldier trauma in Uganda and those children caught up in Northern Ireland's Troubles. Post-graduate students from the Doctoral Programme in Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychology at Queen's recently travelled to Uganda to a school for ex-child soldiers. Their study analysed the levels of post-traumatic stress among ex-soldiers, explained the symptoms of trauma to the children and offered psychological therapy to the most traumatised children. The children in the school were former abductees of the Lord's Resistance Army, a group notorious for kidnapping children, brutalising them and forcing them to become soldiers and sex slaves. Over 35,000 children are estimated to have been abducted over the last twenty-four years. Paul O'Callaghan, one of the students leading the study said: "We screened 205 children for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. We found that even four years after witnessing traumatic war events, rates of psychological distress were very high with 58 per cent of the children showing PTSD symptoms and 34 per cent having depression and anxiety. "The study highlighted a large prevalence of 'traumatic bonding' -- where children adopt an abuser's views, attitudes and behaviours. The study found that over time some of the children began to identify more and more with the values and attitudes of their captors and even began to blame the victims for the violence they were subjected to. He added: "Most remarkably our research showed that the most disturbing thing for the child soldiers was not the murders, massacres, torture or atrocities that they witnessed, instead, it was the death of their mothers during the war. The trauma and psychological distress of those who had lost their mother was much greater than those who had not. "Although this research among child soldiers in Uganda may seem far removed from the lives of children in Northern Ireland there are strong parallels in the shifting sense of identity that can occur with children here who may initially have been coerced into joining criminal or paramilitary organisations but then go on to internalise the values, justifications and methods of these organisations over time." The multi-disciplinary research team at Queen's School of Psychology are continuing their work pioneering a group-based mental health intervention specifically designed to treat psychological distress among child soldiers the Democratic Republic of Congo this summer. Their work is being released in advance of 'Red Hand Day', a worldwide annual commemoration day on 12 February to draw attention to the plight of the 250,000 children who are currently forced to serve as soldiers in wars and armed conflicts, and to remember the thousands who have lost their lives as a result. For more information about Red Hand Day visit www.redhandday.org Email or share this story: Story Source:
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