S2 E3 | Unraveling the Concept of Impulse Purchases

When you do a survey or you ask a customer in a very generic way, why'd you buy that? And they say, impulse, that's just a way to shut you down as an interviewer. Right? That's a. Because they don't know. They haven't thought about it. They haven't really spent the time thinking about something that was like that. And they're like, oh, well, I just did it because I don't whim and that. So that's a way that consumers to get us to stop asking them questions when they don't think they have the answers. But what we know is if you ask the right questions, they have the answers and you have to ask questions. And you have to also put them in situations where they can remember.

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast, where we challenge the status quo of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired Group and I'm one of your co hosts. And we're joined by Greg Engel, who is my co founder and chief, Bob Interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize, and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey, welcome to the Circuit Breaker. This is Bob. This podcast that we're doing today is around impulse, Impulse purchase. And Greg and I kind of get into it. We almost unravel it to kind of the elements of what it's about. And we talk through several examples in the classic mattress example as well. But things like how do you pick drinks and how do you pick the gum to chew? Like, things that you think are impulse are really not. And so enjoy the ride and look forward to the assignment.

Hey, Bob.

Hey, Greg. What's up, man?

All right, so today we want to talk about a subject we've been getting a lot lately, and it's something that's kind of near and dear to your heart because you've harped on it for, I don't know, the 15 years I've known you. So I know it's something that you're going to have a lot of opinions on. It's something that people often use a word they often use, which is impulse buy. I just picked it up. It was just an impulse. I don't know why I did it. Is there. Is there such a thing of impulse buy?

So the way I see it is, like, there's two. Two perspectives on it. One is if, as a consumer, I didn't connect the dots, but if you actually take a step back and investigate the situation and understand kind of the moment and how fast they think about it, it's like the reality is like, no, there's not an impulse buy. And so part of this is to realize that we go through space and time and we go. We basically go through life and we just kind of in the moment. And so most of the time, when people. There's multiple reasons why people will say impulse, but most of the reason is. Is because, well, I didn't plan to buy it, and I bought it. So it's an impulse. And when you actually take a step back and say, well, you know, why now? Why this? What. You know, what was. What made this the right context? You start to realize, like, it's actually been. It's something that just, you know, the sun, the moon, and the stars aligned for that. That thing to kind of find. Find their way into the life.

So I often say it this way, and you touched on it a little bit. But. But we make decisions so fast. We've been programmed to make decisions really fast. There's reflex in our bodies in a lot of things we do. And our mind is no different. Our decision making is no different. So as we get better at decision making, we speed these things up to where we can't actually tell somebody else why we did something. And we often label that impulse buy. And there's a ton of stuff we buy without a plan. Right? There's a ton of things. Not all the time are they labeled impulse, but impulse is usually labeled things that we can't explain why. And they're generally in a category of things which is low cost, low threat of failure is where most people put impulse.

Yeah, A pack of gum is impulse.

A lot of times they think that. Right. But when you talk to people about a pack of gum, we've done a lot of that. And you can actually slow them down. There's really real reasons why they buy, and there's jobs to be done of why we buy gum. It's just that it's a low barrier. So going through your decision making very quick is very easy to do.

It's actually the way I would say it's a very low cognitive load. It's a very. It's like. It's something you just don't even think about. Like, oh, I'm in. Like, oh, yeah, I need more gum. And it's like, there.

But then there's another. Another time we use impulse. Impulse buy. And it's, it's things like. The most famous one from the Rewire perspective is the mattress interview, right? And the person said that was an impulse buy. And a mattress is actually a very.

Brian Walker from Chicago. It was a great interview.

And it's in, it's in multiple books. People can find it if you, if you haven't, if you don't know we're talking about, you can find it in competing against luck. And I believe you can find it in demand side sales as well. But the reason why I bring that one up is because people don't. As an industry, we usually don't think of mattress being an impulse buy because people don't usually use that word. But why did Brian use the word impulse?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Brian's story is basically. He was.

We asked somebody basically what, you know, something they bought. He says, I bought a mattress. And I'm like, okay, tell me about the mattress. And he goes, well, you know, I totally bought it on an impulse. I'm like, when did you buy it? He goes, I bought it on a Saturday at a Costco. I'm like, Saturday at a Costco is crazy. What do you think? He goes like, I don't know. But at some point, it was just the right time. Okay? And so we dig into this and as we go through the story, it turns out the fact is he hasn't been able to sleep for almost two years. And he's been thinking about it, he's been doing things about it, but it's like it hasn't actually worked, the things he tried. And finally he's at Costco with his wife and, and two kids. And they basically get to the point of like, okay, look, I got this big meeting coming up. I haven't been sleeping well. And his wife turns to him and goes like, well, if you need it, then let's get it. And so, bam. Running outside, getting the orange cart, loading the thing up and taking it home. And in his mind is like, well, I didn't plan to buy it. It wasn't really on sale. It wasn't like it was a total impulse thing. But the reality is, as you piece the story together, you start to realize that it's a very, very different story. Because at some point he's been actually creating that space in his brain for a new mattress. Years.

I think the other thing, if you look at the interview or you listen to the interview and listening to it's better than reading it. But you also find that as with Most people, when they start to be interviewed, they start putting pieces together they actually never thought about because it's just in their brains. Right. So when you start talking to them about, well, how long has it been since you've had a good night's sleep? He didn't realize. He never took the time to say, oh, it's been two years.

Right, Right.

That's right. Until you asked.

That's right.

So that's what I mean about decision making. Right. We get good at making these decisions. We get good at putting holding all this information in our heads. And a lot of people say, oh, no, impulse buy. The reason is because we're trying to buy thousands of things at a time. We have all these thoughts in our heads. But no, it's really. We have all these struggles in our heads and we go through buying decisions every day and we just get good at making decisions faster and faster that we don't even realize we're doing it.

Yeah. So I also have this. This notion in. Or this, you know, I'll say memory of Dr. Taguchi and talking about randomness, and it's very similar, which is random. If you believe things are random, then you just have to wait for it to happen. Right. And so in his mind, it was just a waste of time. And so part of this is realizes if you think of impulse and I can't predict when, then it's like we just got to get more people because they'll impulsively buy. And what you start to realize is the fact is it's a very bad concept from a business perspective to think about it as basically impulse or random, because at some point in time, it's just then a numbers game and you don't really understand the value you're creating and the moments that make that matter. I think it's like a weakness that we label something on that then doesn't cause us to go deeper. It just causes us to kind of wait. And waiting to me is one of the deadly sins to me.

Well, and I think from our perspective, impulse buy is two things when people use it. One, it's an excuse for people that make product. Oh, our products are just impulse buy. We don't have to really think about it. We don't have to think about why people do things. We're going to put gum out there and they're going to buy it when they buy it, or we're going to put a bag of chips out in the aisle. I don't want to call it pure laziness, but it's a form of laziness.

Yes.

It's one of those things where.

They can say that so they don't have to do more work to do something.

And I don't think that to Cause, yeah, I don't think they're trying to avoid work, but because they don't know how to explain it, let's say to 100% to, to a level of perfection. It's actually more accurate to say that it is random because I can't predict it, as opposed to try to actually understand the causation behind it.

But if you understand jobs and you understand shopping behavior and you understand that stuff and you can actually triangulate all those things, you can figure it out.

That's right.

It's actually very predictable.

It's way more predictable than people think it is, for sure.

And then the other one is when you're doing interviews with people or you're doing surveys, which surveys are a thing. When you do surveys and you ask.

Someone, I want to do a whole podcast on surveys. Because just to that from that comment.

When you do a survey or you ask a customer in a very generic way, why'd you buy that? And they say, impulse. That's just a way to shut you down as an interviewer. Right. That's a. Because they don't know. They haven't thought about it. They haven't really spent the time thinking about something that was like that. And they're like, oh, well, I just did it because I don't whimper and that. So that's, that's a way that consumers to get us to stop asking them questions when they don't think they have the answers. But what we know is if you ask the right questions, they have the answers and you have to ask questions and you have to also put them in situations where they can remember, right?

So that my classic example of this is when we were doing the home, when we were doing home building, right? And as interviewing that, that couple around, kind of why they bought a house and. Or what bought one of our condos. And it got to the point where it's like they, they hired a, a real estate agent. And they're like, well, it was just time. Like, it just was the right time. And you're like, okay, well, tell me some more about it. And by digging into it and, and getting to when was it? And it happened to be on a Thursday. It happened to be. They happened to be actually wearing, you know, dark, dark clothes because they just came from a funeral like that. The whole notion of setting that all up, got them to remember, like, oh, our friend had passed, and we didn't want to actually move if one of us had passed. We want to actually do this beforehand. And so at the surface, they thought it was totally random that they got the real estate agent, but when you actually kind of laid it out and understood the action, it was very much causal. It's just they couldn't explain why.

Right. And I think that happens a lot to consumers. They run out of words. They run out of. They run out of. They don't really know. And if you just start. Keep asking them questions, they feel bad. So they have to figure out something to say to get you to stop.

Right? That's right. And you don't want to feel. Want them to feel bad, but a lot of times they don't know how to connect those dots. And so that's why unpacking is so, so important in this aspect.

But I want to give, like, a little. And it's not an analogy, but it's a little thing for you to think about how quickly humans can make decisions. So most of our audience is going to be old enough to be able to drive. And when you're going down the road, you're making decisions that you don't even realize you're making. How far? How fast is that other car going? What's going on? And then when something emergency happens, you often it slows down so much for you in the moment, but you still don't really remember what you're doing because you're acting on all these other things. All these decisions that you've made in the past all come together. And you can actually watch this or actually experience it. Whenever you have a close call, right, Someone cut in front of you, you go to the next lane, and it's like, did I really look in the. Did I really look or did I just do it? And then when you slow it down, you actually watch. You actually see people actually do it. They actually. They actually look. You actually do all these things so quick because you've had these situations before. And it's the same thing with buying things. We've gotten so good at doing these things. We make decisions so quickly that we don't even realize we're doing it right.

But that. But this also gets back to the big higher, little higher, which is when we talk about when people do new things, they're doing things that they've always done. The habit things are so deep in their subconscious that they can't even explain it. But it's when people do something new, it's that anomaly of the first time or the new time they do something. That's when actually all of this kind of can come to the surface and we can see it. And so that's why we look for it. I would say we call them switching interviews, but it's this notion of being able to understand kind of when are they kind of firing the old habit and building a new habit.

Yeah. But I think that the big thing out of this podcast with the impulse buy is there's two main categories that we see, which is we make decisions so quickly. And then there's also the thing of, well, it's not a planned purchase. People will use that word for that. And there's other ways people use the word as well. But the big thing we want people that are in innovation, that are in sales, that are in the types of people that listen to us marketing. When you hear the word impulse buy, that's not a time to stop.

No.

It's a time to dig deeper.

That's correct. Lean in.

And your job is to help people remember why.

That's right.

Because as humans, we tend not to do things. We have this thing in the back of our head of danger, and we tend not to do things just on a whim. There's always some rationale behind it. And that's why we always say is when we do interviews, when you look at the person, you're like, there's no way a rational person would make the decision they make. But when you actually understand everything that happened, it becomes very rational.

That's right. The irrational becomes rational with context.

So that's one of the things that we want you to hear from this. When you're interviewing people, when you're talking to people, that when you hear a word that is a stop word, I call it or a deflection word. I'm too tired. This is too much work. Impulse buy, any of those types of things.

That we take as we think we know what people mean by that, but it's really just a word to get us to stop. That's when you're supposed to dig in and help people remember. Not dig in and question and badger, but go at it a different way to figure out what exactly was going on.

So if you were to walk in the office here, the first thing you would notice would be all my shit.

All that stuff I buy. That people would say that. That, if you don't know me, would say is like, impulse purchase.

Yes, we. We often joke to Say you're the one that breaks all our theories. Yes. And.

And so. And so can you explain to people why I do what I do? Because I'm not sure I can. But at the same time, I know you know you know me well enough to actually explain it.

I think you can. So let's slow it down.

Yeah.

Do you buy things randomly?

At one point in time you would say, yes. No.

Do you buy things randomly? Do you believe.

No. No, I do not.

And why is if you're observing me.

You would say yes.

Well, outside person. But do you think you buy things randomly?

No.

Do you go through the timeline and everything you buy?

Yeah, I go through the forces and understand where I am in the timeline. Yes.

So the reason why he's saying all that is because we'll have. We'll have stupid stuff in the office.

Like the balance board.

Well, the balance board is actually very easy to explain. We're getting old and we need to keep our balance, otherwise we won't be.

Able to walk anymore.

And we have standard basket, so that's very easy. But like the other day, Catherine and I got a package that was labeled to Bob. Go figure. Everything that comes here is labeled to Bob.

We feel like it's Christmas every day.

But he opened it and it's a big OSU Ohio State acrylic thing.

No, it's metal. It's very, very. It's powder coated. It's an amazing logo that you put on your wall.

But who that works at Rewired went to osu.

Oh, it was.

Who that works at Rewired?

Oh, no one.

No one. No one who in our office building?

Oh, it's for Allen.

So it's for somebody that has an office in our building, happens to be our attorney. He went to osu. How long have you been looking for something? Oh, yeah, to give him that was related to his college experience.

Three years, four years. So you go into his office and he's got the Emory legal stuff and he's got all these diplomas on the wall. I'm like, yeah, but we need the Ohio State one because I went to Michigan State. And to be honest, it's that Michigan rivalry thing. And it's one of those things where I'm like, we need to put that on the wall that needs to go up there. And he's like, no, no, no.

So it seemed like when Catherine and I would open it, we're like, oh, my God, that's stupid. Right. But when you bought it, it served a couple of different purposes.

Oh, yes, many purposes.

Right. So there were desired outcomes from it.

Yes.

What were your desired outcomes from that?

Well, one is Alan and I have a very special relationship. He's a very good friend. And it's one of those things where Ohio State's ranked number two and it's another. Another year. And he, he really likes the Buckeyes. I know that. He likes to watch them play. And so it's one of those things where he has no Ohio State sweatshirt, he has no Ohio State kind of any of that stuff. Right. The other one was, is that a lot of his clients went to University of Michigan. And like, I feel like he's hiding the fact that he went to Ohio State. So when they walk into his office, it's like, wait, you went to Ohio State, you're the enemy kind of thing. Right. And so one of those, that's the other purpose was, is to basically make sure that we, we at least badger University of Michigan a little bit more.

So there's reasons why you bought it and you're looking for that all the time. And that's the joke we have at the office is, Bob's on Amazon all the time?

No, not all the time.

All the time. In fact, we've discussed a rule that he can't buy anything that has anything on a day that has the word day in it. So he can't shop anymore. So we've actually tried to do that rule. Then we couldn't do that because that wouldn't be fair. And then we said, well, he can't buy on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And I said, well, that won't work because he'll just put everything in his fricking saved account until the days he could buy. So you can't really beat that one. So we gotta, we deal with what it is. But when you're going through, you have these things in your head always. And it might be to the reason why you're going to Amazon might be to break up boredom, it might be to reset your brain. It could be a bunch of different things, but you still have these things in your head of things you might be looking for.

It's, it's. To be honest, it's one of those things where it's a struggling moment that I'm like, okay, like I don't know how to solve this. And it's literally using Amazon almost as Google search to say, like, well, I can solve it this way or I.

Actually think that's BS because we know the jobs of why people.

Yeah.

Why People do. Why people use shopping websites, and I know exactly why you use them. You use them when you're bored or when you're waiting for something you're going through, and then you're. Then you're going through the struggling moments of, what can I do?

Exactly.

But you're pulling those things up in times that you need to reset, and then you use Amazon as a reset for yourself.

Yes. It's the equivalent of playing a game.

Correct?

Exactly.

When you don't want to put that much thought into it, but you want some thought into it. And that goes to Impulse Buy. Right. Is. Is there's more thought into a game than there is to that, because you've already thought about it. So the decision is actually easier than a game.

Well, and it's. It's that notion of, like, okay, it comes up like, okay, how do I fit this in my life? What is the struggling moment we go after? It's like, but I have the frame by which to kind of add it. And so it's. It's never. It's never really, you know, kind of bought without some level of thinking about it and where it fits and. And how it fits.

So that brings us to kind of wrapping up. And as always, we want to do a little bit of homework. And the most basic homework I can give people is any time.

I think we probably have done this one before, but I know I've done it with clients. Is the most basic decision we make all the time is when we go to the refrigerator for something to drink. So what I want you to do, and a lot of people will say that's either habit or impulse or they'll use some weird word for it, but you actually are thinking through your forces. So I want you to stop, and I want you to. When you do that, I want you to stop and think about what's going on, what's pushing you to a certain thing, what's pulling you to the one you pick, what are the anxieties about picking that? And what are the habits? What are the things you normally pick? And I want you to realize how fast you go through that decision making, because that's really the exercise we want you to do. Impulse is just a word, a placeholder for us going through decisions so quickly. So I want you to just take the time to do that. And then the other exercise, if you are in the innovation space, if you are in the product development space, if you are in the marketing space and someone uses the word, be it a customer, be it somebody on your team. I don't care who it is, if they use that word. I want you to start unpacking the word. What do you mean by impulse?

When did it happen? Where did it happen? What else was first?

What do you mean by that for sure? Then unpacking the mechanisms to get there. Right? So those are the couple things I want you guys to take from this and then go forward from that and just realize that a lot of times we use the word because we're just being lazy or we want to deflect and we can't let people do that and we can't let ourselves do that for sure.

Yep, thanks.

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