In the first two articles on using behavioral science and consumer psychology to boost event profits, I focused on creating a better perceived value for event ticket pricing. In this article I will discuss additional factors that impact consumers’ buying decision process. If you haven’t read those articles, you can find them here:
Behavioral Science Can Transform Your Event Ticket Pricing
Changing Price Perceptions When Marketing Events
As we’ve seen in the previous articles above, the brains of consumers are wired to create short cuts or biases when deciding whether to buy a product or attend an event. When marketing events, using what has been learned can boost event profits and mean the difference between a financially successful event and losing money.
Let’s recap the consumer behaviors associated with ticket purchases and how behavioral psychology can impact them.
Ticket price and perceived ticket value
Unsurprisingly, price is one of the top deciding factors in whether a consumer will purchase a product. In the earlier articles on this subject, I showed that we can use cognitive biases to influence ticket purchasers to perceive a higher value than the ticket price. Increasing the perceived value of tickets can boost event profits.
Those articles emphasized the importance of price anchoring in presenting ticket prices, along with context and way prices are presented to potential buyers.
To recap: Price anchoring is a cognitive bias where people rely heavily on the first piece of information they receive (the “anchor”) when making decisions. All subsequent pricing options are evaluated against the “price anchor.” An example is the MSRP that car manufacturers place on all their cars.
Now let’s examine other psychological factors that influence buying decisions that can boost event profits and should influence the way you market events. They are certainly not all of the psychological influences affecting purchasing decisions but others will need to wait for future articles. The ones discussed in this article include:
- Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
- Social Proof
- Commitment and Consistency
- Buyer’s Regret
- Exclusivity
- Emotional Connection
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is such a commonly used marketing tactic that you would think everyone doing event marketing would use it. That’s not my experience with many events hosted by many independent promoters and venues. What we often see at TSE Entertainment is that FOMO is vastly underrated as a way to encourage a potential attendee to become a ticket buyer. The result is that many tickets go unsold to events.
Fear of missing out is a well-researched phenomenon. It’s a powerful motivator in consumer behavior. Consumers do not want to miss out on an opportunity. Being left out creates social stress.
By limiting availability or time, you can increase urgency among potential attendees and trigger potential buyers to make impulsive purchasing decisions that they might not otherwise make. When people perceive that a particular event or ticket is scarce, it increases demand for it. This phenomenon is closely tied to the concept of FOMO. Here’s a few statistics for you to consider:
- A study by Eventbrite found that 69% of millennials experience FOMO, and 60% make reactive purchases to avoid missing out on events.
- 60% of people make purchases because of FOMO, mostly within 24 hours.
- According to a survey by Adlucent, 60% of shoppers say that FOMO has influenced their buying decisions.
- In a survey conducted by TD Ameritrade, 73% of millennials said they had spent money they didn’t have on experiences to avoid FOMO.
When confronted with time or quantity scarcity, buyers worry that if they don’t purchase tickets immediately, they might miss out on a unique experience. The scarcity principle is based on the idea that people tend to perceive items or opportunities as more valuable when they are scarce or in limited supply. Limited time promotions, countdown timers, and phrases like “limited tickets available,” “last chance to buy,” are commonly used to create a sense of urgency and trigger FOMO reactions.
There are many ways to apply scarcity when marketing tickets for events. Those efforts are beyond the scope of this article.
Scarcity works even better when paired with social proof, as it validates desirability.
Social Proof
We are all social beings. In that context, we are heavily influenced by the opinions and actions of other people, especially with those that share common traits and interests. It comes down to this: people will be more inclined to act when they see others doing the same thing.
When potential buyers see others purchasing tickets, attending an event, or talking about one, it creates a sense of validation and reassurance and increases the likelihood that they will join in. It creates a sense of peer pressure to become part of the experience.
Social media is a critical element in today’s world for instilling social proof. When people see their friends posting about attending an event or sharing their excitement, it influences those seeing such posts to want to be part of the conversation and experience. Social proof influences the buying decision process and potential buyers are more inclined to purchase tickets.
When marketing a music concert or festival, you should highlight the positive experiences of past attendees using testimonials, user-generated content of their memorable experiences, photos of attendees, influencer endorsements, and ticket sales numbers. These efforts will help potential ticket buyers perceive the event as positive and worthwhile.
Commitment and Consistency Fallacy
People have a cognitive bias to appear consistent with past actions and decisions, both to themselves and others. That can lead them to continue a course of action or belief despite it no longer the best or rational choice. Consistency can show itself as irrational behavior with people refusing to admit they were wrong even when presented with contrary data.
This fallacy can manifest as the escalation of commitment, where individuals double down by investing even more resources into a failing course of action, rather than admitting they were wrong and switching strategies. Objectivity is replaced by an irrational decision-making process.
This instinctual desire to remain consistent with our prior actions and beliefs can be utilized when marketing events. By getting potential ticket buyers to take smaller actions, they will be more likely to agree later to a larger request. The object is build engagement with potential buyers through small steps, e.g., such as liking or sharing an event page, following an event, or accessing exclusive content or event news. The more they are engaged, they’re more likely they are to purchase tickets to your event at some point.
In essence, their desire to be consistent leads them down a path to purchasing. It could be an irrational decision based on a desire for perceived consistency rather than a rational assessment of the situation.
Consistency also manifests itself after a ticket has been purchased. The desire to remain consistent means that once people make a choice, they tend to align their behavior with that decision. That means that once they buy a ticket, they are more likely to announce that they are going to the event when asked and on social media.
This bias turns them into more than a ticket buyer. They escalate their commitment, become event ambassadors, encouraging friends and social media followers to attend while reinforcing their own decision.
Early ticket sales are important as social currency. These sales tie people psychologically to the event and increase the likelihood that they will act as advocates, driving a broader engagement and attendance.
It’s also important reason to mitigate another psychological behavior after the ticket is purchased that some buyers may experience, buyer regret.
Post-Purchase Behavior: Buyer Regret and Post-Purchase Rationalization
After someone makes a purchase, they may experience psychological anxiety as to whether they made the right decision. It’s important to reduce any buyer remorse as part of event marketing.
Buyers naturally also want to rationalize that buying the event ticket was a great idea on their part. The money was well spent and worth the experience they will get.
To mitigate buyers’ remorse and to reinforce a buyers need to justify their purchase, event organizers should provide confirmation messages, event information, and interesting content that reinforce the buyers ticket purchase and reassure them that their purchase was a good investment.
This reinforces their psychological investment and makes them even more excited about the event and more likely to encourage others to attend it.
Desire for Exclusivity
You may wonder why I’m listing exclusively as a psychological factor that influences buyer behavior. Isn’t it just FOMO at work here? The answer is that while FOMO and scarcity are part of the equation, something else is a work.
The desire for exclusivity reflects a deep desire of consumers to obtain or be a part of with things that are limited, rare, or exclusive. The desire for exclusivity taps into fundamental human needs for belonging, importance, and uniqueness. The desire for exclusive goods or experiences stems from a deep-seated expression of human behavior: we put greater value on things that other people want but can’t have, just because they can’t have them.
This psychological phenomenon is described as dominance-seeking behavior happens, for the most part, at the subconscious level. Researchers say that this dominance motive is central to human behavior.
Another term for it is “mimetic dominance”
“Mimetic dominance” describes a psychological phenomenon where people derive more utility from possessing a good or attribute if they know others also desire it but cannot have it. This “dominance-seeking” can make people value things more when they are excluded from others’ access to them, potentially leading to higher prices, aggressive bidding, and even social stratification.
Marketers use scarcity to create a sense of desirability and urgency, creating the perception that their products or experiences are rare and valuable. Concert or festival organizers use either the number of these exclusive tickets or their price to exclude many from purchasing them. The very act of exclusion makes the experience or product seem more desirable and valuable.
It should be noted that, in experiments with bidding, that this phenomenon is a work even when scarcity is excluded.
Emotional Connections
Social connection is hard-wired into human behavior. Humans have an innate need for emotional connection with others, which is crucial for both mental and physical well-being. Emotional connections often bring joy, a sense of belonging, and fulfillment to our lives. Sharing our experiences, feelings, and vulnerabilities with others can lead to deeper connections and a richer emotional life.
Creating an emotional connection with customers is crucial in the purchase process, as emotions significantly influence buying decisions. By understanding and appealing to customers’ emotional needs, events and venues can sell more tickets, foster loyalty, increase customer lifetime value, and build stronger relationships.
Establishing emotional connections starts with knowing your target audience, including their values and what motivates them to buy.
With that knowledge
- Personalize your messaging, offers, and experiences to those preferences.
- Create memorable experiences by going beyond transactional interactions and create moments that evoke positive emotions. \
- Use Storytelling to connect with potential buyers on a deeper level by sharing relatable narratives.
- Focus on experiences and emotions by shifting the focus from features to the emotional impact of the event.
Share things like backstage content, personal stories, or connecting with fans through social media to build a deeper connection and make the event feel more personal.
Conclusion
As this series of articles hope to show, there are a lot of behavioral science and psychological factors at work when it comes to buying tickets to concerts or festivals. Having a better understanding of them allows event organizers and those marketing events to create better ways to reach potential ticket buyers and entice them to purchase tickets to their events.
Event marketers and organizers should address the following as the develop their ticketing strategies:
- Perceived value
- Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
- Social Proof
- Commitment and Consistency
- Buyer’s Regret
- Exclusivity
- Emotional Connection
While other psychological factors may come into play, focusing on these seven factors will ensure that your approach to marketing tickets is sound.
TSE Entertainment can help you with your event marketing efforts if you find these issues overwhelming or don’t have the time to do the research and planning necessary.
