Oct
7
Post Purchase Dissonance
Posted by: tonyteng | October 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment
As the title suggest, I am going to discuss on the post purchase dissonance experienced by most people. This is especially so if you see the similar product with better price at other place. Or you might just regret buying it later because you became obsessed with the products when the salesperson promoting the product to you? All these do happen and despite priding myself as smart consumer, I do fall for it.
I actually like Canada’s policy for sales which enable the consumers to return the products bought within a certain period. Back in Malaysia, where I hail from, you would have to argue a whole day for the products to be refunded. I believe this a good policy that benefits the consumers as well as sellers. Why do I say sellers? The sellers can establish its credibility because they are not afraid of you returning the product to them. Some irresponsible sellers who are short sighted only care for short term profits but ignore their long term reputation。
So any ways to reduce such dissonance. I like the idea of surrounding the consumers with similar people. This would be something like group decision which makes one thinks that ” Oh, he made the same decision as me! So, I should be right on buying this!”. However, to create such community is a challenging task. Probably, more and more advertisements are needed to reinforce the idea that the product is good to consumers.
Oh yeah! Free maintenance and departments handling complain. I once complained the poor tuition teacher which I was taught by and this gives me satisfaction. Other than I have the avenue to address my grievance, I was compensated handsomely, 6 months tuition fees. This strategy is better in the long run as it would let the consumers to be satisfied rather than having them to go around and complain how bad your product is, thus inadvertently spoiling your reputation. Also, I found online that we can develop more follow up programs or events so that the consumers don’t have this feeling of ” oh, this is a bad company who just care about earning the money but does not care about the welfare of the consumers”.
Reputation for a company is extremely important. When I bought laptop, I did not give a thought for Acex at all because they have the reputation of being spoiled. The choice is immediately cancelled out from my list.
That’s all for now for this busy week. I hope everyone can cope well and yeah, this is a long weekend!