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| A man inspects an Aqua vehicle at a Toyota Motor showroom in Tokyo, Nov. 5. / AP-Yonhap |
By Lee Kyoung-mi
Sugrophobia, the fear of being duped or exploited, may seem like an odd term to most people although many of us become sugrophobic or highly anxious about the possibility of being treated more poorly than other customers or even being taken advantage of by salespeople.
If you are not yet sure about this anxiety, try to put yourself in the shoes of ordinary consumers who find themselves in not-so-unusual shopping situations. They could be talking with an automobile salesperson giving a high-pressure sales pitch, or a young salesperson explaining the newest technical gadgets full of unfamiliar features or a salesperson in a very high-end luxury store for the first time. Sugrophobia can be experienced by any consumer concerned about whether salespeople judge them as less savvy or less experienced about a purchase.
Such anxiety can undermine the well-being of consumers in many ways. Besides the unnecessary emotional distress that they experience, recent studies from marketing scholars indicate that there may indeed be costs caused by anxiety.
According to a research done in 2006 by Florian Zettelmeyer, professor of marketing at the Kellog School of Management, Northwestern University, and his colleagues, a strong agreement with the statement, "I am afraid I will be taken advantage of by a dealer when negotiating over the price of a new car" was associated with a premium of up to 2 percent of a car purchase.
It shows that consumers who are concerned about being duped by a car salesperson will likely end up paying more money for the same car. The reason could be that a consumers' anxiety can signal their feelings of distrust to the other party, resulting in poorer negotiation results.
In terms of extra costs, feelings of anxiety also frequently lead consumers to hire brokers for additional fees or to spend time and effort searching for someone who can help them make choices.
For example, a Bloomberg report in 2005 showed that despite the prevalence of both men and women owning cars, 75 percent of female car buyers planned to bring a man with them to dealerships in order to ensure fair treatment.
More importantly, consumer anxiety can systematically bias consumers' subsequent decisions in the marketplace, keeping them away from judicious choices. The research my colleagues and I published in 2010 suggested that the fear of being duped can cause consumers to forgo their purchases without considering other information that should be considered for their well-being.
The result was consistently observed across various settings such as car shopping, repairs, or even financial services. The underlying psychological explanation is that people naturally withdraw from ― rather than tackle ― situations, and prioritize preventing potential losses ― rather than aiming for potential gains ― when they feel anxious. If they cannot eschew the transaction at all, they hasten to leave the marketplace interaction.
Now, the important question is what can be done to improve matters. Alleviating consumer anxiety is a very important issue not only for consumers, but also for retailers.
From a retailer's perspective, inducing shoppers to linger is one of the most important issues because the time consumers spend inside a store evaluating merchandise is known to be tied to the chances of making a sale.
Many retailers, aware of this significance, are eager to improve the atmosphere of their stores and make it less intimidating to their customers, thereby keeping them inside the store longer. Our research suggests that retailers could mitigate the consumer anxiety by introducing a sense of calm into the transaction environment.
In particular, inspired by the burgeoning fields of "olfactory consumer science," we found that the scent of vanilla helped assuage consumers and helped them feel more assured of their transaction in potentially intimidating purchase situations. While scents were used in the research, any tactics firms can employ to calm consumers could help the transaction take place as a marketer intended.
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Lee Kyoung-mi is an assistant professor of marketing at the School of Business, Yonsei University.
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