Behavioral remainder

“The most beautiful thing about wristbands is their sustainability, which is not the case with cycling. Wherever there is cycling, people will talk about it, but it cannot be done continuously every year . Even if this event is held irregularly every year, it cannot remind consumers every day like a wristband. It can be said that the wristband has this reminder function.”

Behavioral surplus is. A physiological experience that remains in the body after people wake up. A mysterious lover could make one write a mysterious novel. Politicians will try their best to shake hands with famous tycoons and use relevant photos to show off. As discussed in the “Social Currency” chapter, things like yellow wristbands can allow people to learn about themselves, go deep inside themselves, and gain clear insight into what they like. But it’s difficult to observe certain things, such as whether someone donates for a specific reason, or whether people prefer mythology to historical fiction.

However, when there is public visibility, these leftovers can make it easier for people to gradually follow and imitate, and provide people with opportunities to share related products and ideas with each other.

Let's look at the polls. People voted on weekdays and stood in long lines, sometimes waiting for hours for a chance to cast their sacred vote. But these are not problems. The biggest problem is that voting itself is a very hidden act. If you don’t clearly see where everyone’s votes go, you can’t know how many people’s votes will determine the final voting result. Because there isn’t enough social proof.

However, in official elections in the 1980s, there was a very clear way to make votes more visible, namely the use of "voting stickers." This is a very simple thing, but it creates behavioral residual, because the voting post makes people's voting behavior public, even after the voter has left the scene, it will still have a certain impact on other voters. The voting post also reminds people that today is voting day and everyone else has gone to vote, so you should hurry up and vote too.

Behavioral surplus also exists in various products and ideas. Tiffany, Victoria's Secret and other retailers provide customers with their specially designed shopping bags to take away. Because some retailers have social currency features, many customers reuse these shopping bags and are reluctant to throw them away. They use Victoria's Secret shopping bags to carry their gym clothes, or pack their lunches in Tiffany bags, or use tan Bloomingdale's bags to carry the town newspaper. People even reuse bags from restaurants, discount stores, and other unknown places even though they are not specially marked.

Clothes retailer Lululemon takes this idea even further. Unlike other people's paper bags, which are as flimsy as others, Lululemon makes the bags very strong and even durable, making it difficult to throw away the shopping bags people get in their stores. And because these bags are recyclable, people can use them to carry groceries or for other purposes. In this way, behavioral residuals help the brand provide more social proof to people.

The gift itself can provide a behavioral surplus. If you go to certain conferences or job fairs, you may get gifts or souvenirs such as large water bottles, pens, T-shirts, drink coolers, stress balls, and snow shovels. Wharton gave me a tie two years ago.

However, some of these giveaways do provide more behavioral residual than others. Giving someone a portable makeup bag is a great idea, but women often use makeup bags in their private bathrooms, so it doesn't make the brand observable. Although people don't often use coffee cups and gym bags, the use of these items is generally in public places, where they can be observed.

People promoting their thoughts and actions online can also create behavioral surplus. Comments, blogs, posts or other forms of content can allow others to find traces of use left by previous generations. For this reason, many companies and organizations like Facebook encourage people to write reviews. With a simple click, people not only show their affinity with organizations, products, and ideas, but they also help businesses spread the word about what products are worth buying and what products are worth paying attention to.

ABC News found that the introduction of the rating click system directly increased Facebook's click-through rate to 2.5 times its original rate.

Faced with crazy promotions or automatic postings from other websites, what will people do on their social network pages? Music is often thought of as a social act, but Spotify software takes this process much deeper. This software not only helps people find any song they like, but also helps people paste the link of this song on their Facebook, so that their friends can easily see their favorite songs, which naturally also promotes the publicity at the same time. Spotify is the software. As a result, many other similar websites or products followed suit.

But should we always make things as public and visible as possible? Are there any counterexamples? Could something be worse if it became public?