Pavlovian Reinforcement

August 17, 2010 | Written by Lucie Zhang

During my first visit to Shanghai, I was hounded by the extremely aggressive sales personnel at every store. With every turn and glance, there was someone at my side talking my head off in an attempt to get a sale. Along with being downright annoyed, I felt stalked and harassed. Tell them you don’t need help, and they only insist. Walk away, and they run after you yelling about “special prices” that only you will receive. It’s enough to give any girl a headache.

And yet, ironically, while I hated these sale-seeking stalkers, I actively volunteer to be tracked here in America. With Groupon, Foursquare, Scoutmob, LivingSocial, and more, the list goes on and on for the online services and mobile applications I subscribe to (and that are out there in general) which exist solely to monitor my shopping patterns and behaviors and offer me special deals and promotions.

The growing use of Web coupons, mobile coupons, and location-based apps has, in turn, created a new breed of plugged-in, hyper-informed, deal-seeking shoppers. Coining these consumers ”Xtreme Shoppers,” Future Buy, GfK Consumer’s integrated study of shopping behaviors, found that a whopping 31% of Americans fell into this descriptive category. As described in the Financial, Xtreme shoppers view the shopping experience in a game-like manner; they take advantage of new, emerging technologies and information in order to gain control over and personalize their shopping experience. Ultimately, they “regularly synergize” between in-store and online shopping in order to “maximizing shopping and purchase value” — thereby “winning” when they get what they feel to be the best overall deal.

In effect, these shoppers can be seen as the next iteration of the Social Researcher, identified in 2007 as the shopper who uses technology to seek out peer feedback and customer reviews about a product before making a purchasing decision. Either way, as Web and mobile coupons become more mainstream – with the demographic using them being the same as the ones most likely to clip off-line coupons – businesses are eager to find a way to capitalize on this deal-seeking behavior.

Thanks to sites like Groupon, SCVNGR, and Foursquare’s “Special Deals Nearby” feature, businesses have been focused on enticing Xtreme Shoppers to check out their stores by rewarding them when they check in. And now, with the new Shopkick application, shopping behavior reinforcement is getting even more specific:

Check-in to a store: get a kickbuck. Walk into a store: get even more kickbucks. Swipe through offers and products: kickbuck, kickbuck, kickbuck. Go into the dressing room: …well, you get the idea.

Ultimately, those that receive enough kickbucks will get special gift cards, credits for music downloads or Facebook games, and more. But along with the clear game-like aspect Shopkick brings to shopping, this strategy of reinforcing specific actions with a positive “kick” is also hauntingly similar to another behavior-shaping theory: Pavlov’s classical conditioning.

Are businesses simply making the shopper “salivate in response to the bell” or are they providing legitimate rewards and information that enhance the purchasing experience? By existing in the digital/mobile space, are companies being too passive aggressive with their in-store marketing? And at what point do web coupons and mobile applications that track our shopping behavior become too invasive of our personal privacy?

Is Xtreme Shopping smart decision-making or America’s new addiction?

Special thanks to Dave Cannon, who helped provide inspiration for this post. Be sure to check out his coverage of recent social media news at the Left Brain blog.

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