How the brain shops: Hunting and foraging

Welcome to article two on how the brain shops – if you missed article one, you can catch up here. By understanding who we make decisions, we can ensure our messaging engages people – increasing conversion rates at each stage of the funnel.

Our focus today is why storytelling matters to us and how much, if at all, our brains have evolved from our cave-dwelling days.

Let us begin by considering the modern world we all inhabit; it is driven by Consumerism and the need to reward ourselves.

The world loves to shop, why?

Because we humans love to reward ourselves. That reward comes in many different forms;

There is a social aspect of rewards, such as:

Hugs and kisses.

Being thought of.

Being grateful and mindful of what you have.

Dog cuddles – The best, (my bias in play!)

Making love

Those rewards are our Emotional Intelligence in play to soothe ourselves. To show and feel that we matter and show others that they matter, and we feel good about them. Social reward gives us the Endorphin chemical release in the brain, it literally does soothe ourselves from mind to body.

The other chemical we receive from positive engagement and socialising is Dopamine. Dopamine opens the door to the ultimate human reward which comes from the things we do, the treats we eat and the things we buy and use.

The cool thing about understanding what happens inside the brain when we shop, is Dopamine is not just when you eat or when you wear what you bought. It begins right at the very start of your experience.

Shopping is no different to when we used to hunt and forage, the same chemical release happens in stages as it did then, it is just where we get the Dopamine from that has altered.

The Dopamine hit you get it is present in all seven stages and increases in size at each stage.

Consider that for a moment – at every stage you feel a Dopamine hit, it grows per stage but is ever present. Imagine being in front of that as a strategy and you inject your brand/product into the experience.

As a guide:

Stage 1-3 is the excitement Dopamine hits.

Stage 4-5 is where brands often mistreat us, create frustration and the Dopamine runs off to another brand!

Stage 6-7 is where repeat purchase seeds are sown. It is also where brands kill the revisit sale as they treat us as one and done, losing the opportunity to grow our relationship with the brand and its products.

The repurchase factor on the brain chemical level is key knowledge to optimise. By stage 7 you have a repeating but decreasing Dopamine hit.

When you buy food, you will get a Dopamine hit eating the food. However, unless it was a world class result, you are unlikely to drop in a memory about that specific moment. Dopamine is one and done.

When you buy clothing, hobby items, gaming, stuff you can use multiple times, then the Dopamine continues, but lessens over time. You do not play a game forever or wear the same item of clothing forever. At the start the Dopamine is high but by the 10th time you play or wear it, the hit lessens and so on and so forth until you need to replace the reward.

We hunt, we feel, we shop, we feel, we forage, we get Dopamine, we buy, we get Dopamine.

We are creatures of reward and pleasure; we are to the shopping mall as we were to the Hunt.

Storytelling is a Chemical Release

Consider that socialising is laden with storytelling and the same is true of the products we buy.

Let us run a quick fun test, take a breath, and then tell yourself the answer, ideally aloud (but not if in the office!) as soon as you finish each question.

3, 2, 1, go:

Why do you love your favourite clothing company so much?

Why do you love your favourite restaurant so much?

When you travel or pick a hobby what do you do and why?

What you are showing in your answers is the story you have told yourself about each experience and why you prefer certain things. It is not an area we touch often as our hunting and foraging reward system is extremely automated. It needs to be. The brain loves to minimise our conscious thinking and work with what it knows.

The stories change over time, we change our preference over time but unless we get a terrible experience, change is quite slow.

Now, consider how bad this is managed today in your day-to-day consumer and working life as terrible experiences are rife.

The work situation where the salesperson does not listen, does not ask you questions and is desperate to lock in a repeating pattern of talking and demonstrating the same way they always do.

The emails from your one-time favourite brand who keep sending you irrelevant products, despite your rich history of order and loyalty with them.

The adverts from brands you should love but they keep punting the <insert actors name> Fragrance or Sunglasses ALL the time and not the things you are into.

The brain loves to anchor onto stories and if you are telling stories, you can open the mind to new experiences, but it must be relevant to them. Despite all the talk about a personalised world, today’s reality for us all rubs against our grain of self, identity and more than anything else, the rewards and chemicals we crave.

Next time you feel like a reward and are all hugged out, you will go to the places, companies, products, and services who have triggered stories inside of you. When you are out of stories and need a certain type of reward you will go and hunt for new ones.

If you want to know more about how the brain shops for your specific audiences, then you can have a discovery call.

Our discovery experience includes running some Data Science x Shopping Psychology algorithms in advance of the call for maximum relevance and insights about your marketplace and brand experience.