Nancy Puccinelli, Associate Professor University of Oxford

We are nearly into the throes of Christmas shopping. Does this give you a sinking feeling or do you revel in the thought? How you answer this question will determine how much you will spend and what you will buy. As a result, it is the million-dollar question for retailers. As an Associate Professor of Marketing at Saïd Business School, I have discovered some interesting things about our shopping behaviour.

Oxford Mail:

Nancy Puccinelli at the Said Business School

Some shopping malls will soon be reverberating with canned music renditions of Jingle Bells. We have found that overdoing the Christmas cheer to demonstrate that “tis the season to be jolly” actually puts more stress on shoppers, who find it off-putting. We have also found that dimmer lighting, wafting nostalgic gingerbread smells and playing classical melodies such as The Nutcracker instead of the usual clichéd jingles are far more likely to get us in the mood for Christmas spending.

Less is more is the message for retailers as moderation in festive decor means we are more likely to spend and also like the retailer more.

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Now on to the topic of shop assistants… many of us feel particularly stressed during the Christmas period. Loaded with shopping, the last thing we may want is a talkative shop assistant.

If the sales assistant sees beyond the tight, polite smile and realises when we are in a hurry and want to be served as quickly as possible, we are likely to regard this as excellent service. However, our research also shows that managers may take issue with staff who do not chat with the customers, as providing poor service – even if a customer’s non-verbal cues, such as shifting from foot to foot and glancing at their watch, were read correctly by the shop assistant in the first place. For those of you thinking of sending your husbands out to shop, beware! When men go Christmas shopping they are far more likely to be seduced by red price tags. They perceive price tags in the colour red as offering greater value than those printed in black. Our research suggests men read advertisements and price tags superficially, relying on “clues” for shortcuts to decision-making. We found that women read advertisements with a more critical eye, unaffected by the colour of the tags, recalling prices with a greater degree of accuracy than men.

We have also discovered that shoppers can be divided into those who respond to messages about maximising pleasure, the opportunity seekers, and those who respond well to messages about prevention, the risk avoiders. At Christmas, when messages are about promoting indulgence, shoppers who want to ‘max out’ at Christmas are more open to the idea of switching to premium brands and to spending more to get the most out of their purchases. The risk avoiders are attracted by a different marketing strategy, one such as the Back to School campaign, which has undertones of avoiding the risk of not having your child equipped properly for the start of term. Shops that match their marketing messages to the consumer’s prevailing mood can increase their chance of completing the purchase by as much as 186 per cent.

Funnily enough at Christmas, shops often do not need to offer price promotions, multi-buys or discounts as incentives to get us to buy. Indeed, these can have the opposite effect by undermining the celebratory mood of Christmas shoppers and actually reduce sales.

So reading this might have put you in the mood for shopping. But what sort of mood is the big question. Will you see red when a chatty shop assistant approaches or red price tags?

For more info about my research: sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/nancy-puccinelli

For more info about the Said Business School http://sbs.ox.ac.uk

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