They’ve Had Enough of It: Marketing to Ever Novelty-Seeking Consumers

Search for novelty and appreciating it are hardwired into our brain. In the context of novelty, our brain reacts by releasing dopamine which motivates us to explore further, anticipating a reward.

So it’s no wonder if a purchase has been triggered by a simple novelty of a product, and if we scroll the news feed (including social media) and fill in our brain with lots of information much of which we haven’t been searching for. Yes, that’s true, sometimes we find it useful and relevant, sometimes what we forget it the other day (or sooner), but in the process of learning more, exploring more we so often feel rewarded for “doing the good thing”.

However, neuroscientists — Per Møller, University of Copenhagen is one of them — argue that at a certain point in that learning journey we stop liking it that much when we’ve had enough of it. It actually means that our brain needs a pause, that we need a break before we start a new cycle.

How is all that used in marketing? In different ways. First of all, mass market manufacturers are constantly offering new tastes, designs, renovate and rebrand, chasing their consumers in that novelty race. The smartest ones masterfully maneuver, addressing different product characteristics at a time, while the others are fanatically playing with just one or two all the time.

Let’s take a food manufacturer, for instance, believing that packaging redesign is the right thing to do to improve sales. At the end of the day, consumers see (most probably, unconsciously) that all that redesign game has nothing to do with improvement/enhancement of the taste and quality of the product. Or, let’s look at a lifestyle website, whose bloggers write articles with a bias they prefer, like trends in apparel. Today the cover trends in shoes. Tomorrow, trends in scarves. Next, trends in skirts. Even though they may be very profound on that topic, their readers most probably, are also interested in a number of other life-style related topics and sooner or later will find that blog “boring!”

Renovate or die, has been a popular marketing slogan for so long. And it does make sense still. However, today marketing should be more sophisticated and go far beyond offering novelties which are detected by consumers in the blink of an eye. To be on the right track fr success, your product should be the “purple cow”, or, in other words, remarkable, outstanding. Considering consumers insights, wants and needs hiding there in their subconscious, and applying personalization to your products and services, will pay off a great deal more.