Research on cognitive dissonance in relation to shopping and purchasing often focuses on the post-purchase reaction. But the studies show that cognitive dissonance is just as relevant, and maybe even more relevant, in the pre-decision process.
In fact, one could argue that marketing and advertising are all about trying to induce a feeling of cognitive dissonance in order to encourage someone to make a purchase. For example, let’s say that you have two opposing thoughts, feelings, or ideas:
- “I’m the kind of person who likes to dress well.”
- “My wardrobe is starting to look dated.”
These two thoughts could be contradictory. You’ll start to feel conflict because the thoughts are not coherent. According to Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (1957), you’ll want to take action to reduce the conflict. One way to reduce the conflict would be to buy some new clothes (or buy the new pair of shoes).
There are actually two states: dissonance and coherence. Dissonance is when there’s a conflict; coherence is when there’s no conflict. You might feel dissonance or coherence before or after you make a decision. In order to remove the uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, you basically have two choices:
- Take action to remove the conflict (for example, buy the new shoes to update your wardrobe).
- Change your internal belief about one of the conflicting items (“Actually, I’m not a person who cares much about how I dress” or “My wardrobe isn’t really outdated.”).
When you want to encourage someone to make a purchase, a powerful way to do that is to introduce a conflict and propose the solution for removing the conflict.
Creating Or Highlighting A Problem
One of the ways that cognitive dissonance can be used to encourage buying behavior is to highlight a problem. People may not realize they have a conflict. Advertising or marketing can make people aware that there is a problem—and therefore make them aware of a conflict: “I didn’t know that eating too much meat puts a strain on the health of the world’s environment.”
Some would say that sometimes marketing and advertising create a problem where none existed before: “I didn’t realize that using the generic brand of shampoo was making my hair dull and lifeless.”
Creating and highlighting the problem sets up the cognitive dissonance. Now that you recognize there’s a problem or conflict, you’ll be uncomfortable. You’ll want to reduce that dissonance, and one way to do that will be to purchase the product or service being offered. One role of marketing and advertising is to create messaging that induces pre-decision dissonance and messaging that advocates purchase of a product or service to restore coherence of that particular conflict: “I guess I’m not eating well and I’m overweight, but if I join this gym I can do something about it.”
Takeaways
- When you want to encourage people to take action, stimulate cognitive dissonance by introducing the idea that they are being inconsistent with their beliefs or behavior. This creates or highlights a problem.
- Once you’ve introduced a conflict, position your service or product to reduce the cognitive dissonance.
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