Rarely does a purchase have no drawbacks. Even if the product is exactly what the consumer wants, it nevertheless could have a feature that falls short of what is offered by competitors. How awful is it that your clients are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of your products? According to recent research, if you control how the bad news is received, it can even be beneficial.

Blossoming results from the blemishing effect.

Danit Ein-Gar (of the University of Tel Aviv), Baba Shiv, and Zakary Tormala (both of the Stanford Graduate School of Business), in a series of tests, looked at what occurred when they gave buyers a tiny bit of unfavourable information on goods they were already evaluating. This unfavourable information included everything from actual negative product characteristics (such as a pair of hiking boots having “only two” colour options) to sources of inconvenience (such as a set of champagne glasses that didn’t come with a hard box) to extremely minute or unimportant specifics (e.g. the box for a pair of shoes was scuffed).

The authors discovered that, in some circumstances (see below), having a little bit of unfavourable information increased consumer propensity to purchase the good.

In other words, the product was made more appealing by informing them that it had a minor flaw. The “Blemishing Effect” is what the writers refer to as.

Why would buyers prefer a pair of hiking boots more simply because they were informed of one minor drawback? The authors speculate that it might be a side effect of how we assess information and—more significantly—how we always want to be correct.

Bolstering is caused by the blemishing effect.

The Blemishing Effect only functions when the negative information is encountered after some stronger good information, which is the first and most important consideration. In other words, the effect vanishes if the negative information is presented first or if it is overly harsh (and you may be worse off than if you had just never mentioned the negative at all).

Due to the primacy effect, which states that customers are more likely to believe arguments they first encounter, positive information must appear first. This indicates that clients can be persuaded to form a favourable opinion based on the original favourable information.

Take a look at a 1979 study by Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper to see how this procedure functions. The authors assigned two research on the efficiency and benefits of the death penalty to 151 Stanford undergraduates. One of these studies “proved” the effectiveness of the death penalty, whilst the other “established” its ineffectiveness. The authors used the knowledge of which students were in favour of or opposed to the death penalty to predict whether students would read the study that supported their viewpoints first or the study that contradicted them.

The students did not treat both research equally, which was their main finding. Instead, they would create reasons to dispute or invalidate the study with which they disagreed using the study with which they previously agreed (a demonstration of the classic Confirmation Bias). They also tended to leave the experiment with a stronger conviction that they had been right the entire time, despite reading one paper in favour of and one against the death penalty.

In other words, they merely strengthened their initial convictions after seeing arguments on both sides. “Attitude Polarization” is what the writers refer to as (and note that this is a heavily simplified version of their results).

The blemishing effect induces purchasing

This implies that the Blemishing Effect needs to be used very cautiously in the actual world and that it might not be present for things that consumers need to carefully consider. In other words, a Blemishing Effect is probably not going to help with big, pricey, or other significant purchases. However, noting a minor negative quality may be advantageous for modest or routine transactions (even if it seems irrelevant). Additionally, you should anticipate experiencing the Blemishing Effect whenever you anticipate clients to be hurried, distracted, or otherwise worn out.

There are two methods to damage a product besides from mentioning its qualities. To draw attention to a (somewhat) unfavourable product comparison is one tactic. For instance, unless it is renamed as “just two colours,” having “two colours” as alternatives for a pair of hiking boots is not always viewed as a drawback.

Scuffing the packaging is the second, and arguably easiest, method. If you’re an online store, you may also try the counterintuitive tactic of presenting less-than-ideal product images.

Even though blemishing is a somewhat sensitive effect, several conclusions from the study nonetheless apply to all different kinds of products. The research indicates that you should always provide these characteristics after you have stated some clear positive characteristics because most products contain features or properties that are less desirable than others. Making your clients’ first impression positive by placing the positive information first will still have that effect.

Takeaways

Always begin with some compelling pros before stating the cons when outlining the pros and disadvantages. Customers will then recommend your product to others.

If you have a product about which customers won’t be thinking too hard, include a small con (even if it’s irrelevant) in order to bolster customers’ positive evaluations of the product.