of Consumer Choice
Natalia Gladkikh, Vladimir Vainer
The answer to the question "Why people buy social things?" in first approximation can seem obvious: a desire to help others (based on inner ambitions or "social desirability" of such behavior pattern) is inherent to human nature. But we could limit ourselves with this answer if we were interested only in a situation when a person makes a purchase not because he needs these goods (and as it often happens — he or she doesn't need it at all), but to help a particular orphanage, child, a friend, a charitable foundation, etc.
Natalia Gladkikh,
Ph.D. in Psychology, Leading Expert of the Institute of Socio-Economic Design, Higher School of Economics
Vladimir Vainer,
Director of Positive Changes Factory
Some time ago, a message actively circulated social media calling to buy things from elderly women standing and selling goods near metro stations — not because their goods are of good quality, but because those elderly women are different by the fact of their particular need to earn some money, even small sums. "It seems we all need a geranium plant" that message ended. In this case, we can hardly speak about consumer behavior, but likely about compassionate plea. A model of buying an assumed «geranium» because it is sold by an elderly woman obviously cannot become a regular model — we will have to do something with this geranium. Such charity model — donations in exchange of conventional «goods» — was popular in Russia before the revolution. Charity tokens, White Flowers, Buy a Red Egg and other campaigns that were popular at that time are good examples of such (and we must say — effective) strategy of fundraising. They are popular nowadays. Famous Currant Party of the Creation foundation, "Candid Fair" and many other programmes, offers and campaigns can serve as an example of fundraising based on the «double» profit — I get both goods (and it is not a geranium plant in most cases, but really descent, useful and pleasant product or service) and feeling that I have done something useful.
It is more difficult in the situation when «social» goods enter a competition with «regular» goods on a shop shelve, in a fair row and in other situations of making everyday purchasings. When we talk about a regular consumer behavior with the consumer decision as the key strategy, choice in favour of a certain «alternative» which is defined by target setting, choice criteria and strategies and a plenty of more complex phenomena.
The consumer behavior is a subject of study of many sciences, but in general we can distinguish two large groups — theories not related to psychology, which include economical and mathematical models, with building game theories, statistical decisions, calculations of win-win strategies, etc., and psychology theories described by accounting of the factor of human mentality which «distorts» ideal mathematical and statistical strategies, which occur in everyday human decisions, in real life. We often choose a shop which is not close to us and cheaper, but a shop which is far from us and expensive — just because of a shop assistant who is our friend and we know him for many years. And it is difficult to calculate mathematically a choice of our life partner, for example — we can hardly rely on credits of a conditional test. "A person is not irrational so much so that to always act rationally" — with these words Gregor Simon described the formula of distortions of human mind, he is one of the authors and founders of the psychological approach in studying the process of choosing, and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, by the way. Interestingly enough, that another well-known author of the psychological approach in analyses of the process of choosing — Daniel Kahneman — is also a Nobel Prize winner and also in economics. It turns out that even a strict and rational economy has a space for irrationality of impact of psychological processes in the situation of making a choice.
Works of Kahneman, Simon and many other researchers of the psychological approach are joined by a pursuit to find out how a choice is made in reality. The «heuristic» notion is the important category in this approach. These are simple principles, established algorithms expressed in the form of judgements, which people use to facilitate a task of decision making. Proverbs can serve as examples of heuristics. "For one that is missing there is no spoiling a wedding", "where there’s smoke there’s fire" and other proverbs actually define our behavior in certain situations, help us to make decisions — to wait or to leave, believe or not, etc. We reference to them as a principle of choosing a behavior model in certain situations.
Before we proceed to the analysis of heuristics which define a choice of social goods, first of all we should provide proofs in favour of the judgement in the title as proved one — people buy social things. Do they really buy? Do the goods of social value are "modal alternatives", i.e. a choice option which has advantages compared to others?
Hereinafter I will refer to data of the research we conducted several years ago by the order of Our Future Foundation for regional and social programmes. As Diagrams 1 and 2 show, the respondents are ready to change even the brand they prefer to buy «regularly» (this particular situation — regular purchasing is the most difficult to be changed) for the products of social entrepreneurs. Although, if we review the social desirability of this answer as a correction factor (though, in our case — anonimous online survey — the conditions minimally contributed to its occurrence), we get fairly significant ratio. Partially, the factor of "external validity", i.e. that confirms accuracy of our hypothesis, is active usage of «social» as the strategy
