Does More Information

Help or Confuse Buyers of Your Book? 

      eMarketer, always on top of new concerns and trends in marketing and selling, once again hopped aboard an interesting concept. A University or Iowa research team found that people who have only a little information about a product they buy are happier with that product than those who have more info. 

      The study found that “once people commit to buying or consuming something, there’s a kind of wishful thinking that happens and they want to like what they’ve bought.”   

      Intrigued by that concept, emarketer polled several of its own analysts on the subject. Here are some of the responses: 

      “Realistically, people research products to either make themselves comfortable making a choice or to rationalize their primary choice. Either way they can defend it to their partners, parents, friends and siblings.”  

      “It is all very well to say that we are now a self-serve consumer-driven market with more information for people to make more informed choices. But if the process of making a choice and the fear of making the wrong choice is greater than the difference in value between choices, then an increase in choice does not necessarily equate to an increase in value for the consumer.” 

       “If I research and choose a product, I’m expressing a view about myself. Once I’ve made the purchase, I need to rationalize that choice in order to stay consistent.” 

      Maybe we authors ought to re-evaluate our selling copy, simplify our landing pages and generally reduce the complexities of our sales pitch. However, there is a difference in products. The book buyer is searching for content, particularly in the case of a nonfiction book, so it behooves us to reach for a balance between surfeiting our potential buyer with detail, while including enough to whet his/her appetite.