There’s More To Buyer Satisfaction Than “Rock-Bottom Prices”

We can take a lesson from the apes on why consumers will or won’t pay more for the lamb or wool they truly desire and enjoy.  Please bear with me here, because first we need to analyze their motivation for buying or not buying, not just their desire for gratification in its strictest sense.

      In the October 3, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal (online) there was a story titled “Our Kinder, Gentler Ancestors,” by Frans B. M. de Waal, PhD.  The story touched on animals’ reaction to unequal rewards for doing similar jobs.

      In the story, Dr. de Waal mentioned what he observed when monkeys got a substandard wage a job completed:

…If one gives two monkeys hugely different rewards for the same task, the one that gets the short end of the stick refuses to cooperate.

   We hold out a piece of cucumber, which normally entices any monkey to perform.  But with its neighbor munching on grapes, cucumber is simply not good enough anymore.

   They protest the situation, sometimes even flinging those measly cucumber slices away, showing that even monkeys compare what they get with what others are getting.

The point Dr. de Waal makes is that even with an ape’s IQ, cost-vs.-return is not a consumer’s only motivation.

      There is (in addition to practical considerations) an irrational but inborn sense of “fairness” that governs behavior, even in animals.  This “fairness sentiment” can rule out a favorable response to a seemingly good deal.

      Dr. de Waal, who has written a number of books on primate behavior and is a professor of primate behavior in Emory University’s (Atlanta) psychology department, says that also human beings—worldwide—tend to reject a deal if it seems unfair to them, even if they stand to gain heavily by it.

      “They may accept a split of 60 for proposer and 40 for themselves,” he says, “but not an 80-to-20 split.”

      A “60-for-them, 40-for-me split;” what a deal!