While each individual person in the world has their own beliefs, interests, and ideas, there are many concepts of psychology that overlap amongst individuals in order to create a group consciousness. Many successful business enterprises have used elements of psychology in order to market their products or create new customers. Some of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world, in fact, simply used basic tenants of psychology that most people use to influence other people or make a decision.
The Inclusion of Facebook
Over a billion people log onto Facebook each day in order to find out what their friends and family are up to. The premise of Facebook is simple: everyone is connected, everyone shares. This group dynamic is based on a very simple psychological concept known as inclusion. Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook, launched his site with a business plan that tapped into the tenants of inclusion. The plan is simple: people like to know that they are in a group and are willing to invest mental energy into maintaining a group. Facebook creates a group of an individual and their friends, a group that is not subject to any influence except that of the user. This business succeeds because it makes each user feel like they are part of a social dynamic without ever needing to leave their house in order to participate.
An Apple a Day
No computer company in the world has a higher stock price than Apple, but this iconic corporation that launched everything from the iPhone to the original Macintosh chose a very different business plan than many other rivals, including Microsoft and IBM. From the 1980s to today, founder and CEO Steve Jobs worked as an entrepreneur who scorned the idea of market research. Rather, Jobs and Apple created their products based on the psychological principle of the spotlight effect. This term, a means of explaining how people think more about themselves than they do about strangers, acts as a business plan because it creates the perception of an aura that the spotlight effect enhances. People want to be noticed and want attention. Apple marketed its products as a device that will get people to notice you, whether it is by its sleek design or its practicality. The end result is tens of millions of customers who think of Apple as an image as well as a computer company.
If At First You Don’t Succeed
If you have ever been in a liquor store and wondered why Grey Goose vodka bottles look different from most liquor bottles, you should know that there is a very good reason. The very first Grey Goose products were not hard liquor but wine. The problem was that Grey Goose wine was considered to be so poor that nobody was willing to buy it. As such, the founder, Sidney Frank, had tens of thousands of wine bottles lying around with nothing to do with them.
Undaunted, he began to distill vodka, fill up the wine bottles, and sell them instead. This was not much of an improvement; the vodka sold only slightly better than the wine. As such, Frank decided his business needed a psychological boost. Instead of creating a better vodka, he marketed his vodka aggressively, using the psychological principle of balance theory. Balance theory suggests that a person will like an object more if it is used by a person they like, and vice-versa. Frank capitalized on this theory by having celebrities, athletes, personalities, musicians, and actors all appear drinking his vodka. The end result was a financial windfall — and more than enough sales to use up the wine bottles.
About the Author: Joshua Turner is a writer who creates informative articles in relation to business. In this article, he describes the use of psychology in creating businesses and aims to encourage further study through Psychology Master’s Degrees