fashion, they structure their interactions with us so that our own need
to be consistent will lead directly to their benefit.
Certain large toy manufacturers use just such an approach to reduce
a problem caused by seasonal buying patterns. Of course, the boom
time for toy sales occurs before and during the Christmas holiday sea-
son. The toy companies make fat profits during this period. Their
problem is that toy sales then go into a terrible slump for the next couple
of months. Their customers have already spent the full amount in their
toy budgets and are stiffly resistant to their children’s pleas for more.
Even those children whose birthdays fall soon after the holidays receive
fewer toys because of the recent Christmas spree.
So the toy manufacturers are faced with a dilemma: how to keep sales
high during the peak season and, at the same time, retain a healthy
demand for toys in the immediately following months. Their difficulty
certainly doesn’t lie in convincing our naturally insatiable offspring to
want a continuous flow of new amusements. A series of flashy television
commercials placed among the Saturday morning cartoon shows will
produce the usual amounts of begging, whining, and wheedling no
matter when it appears during the year. No, the problem is not in mo-
tivating kids to want more toys after Christmas.
The problem is in motivating postholiday spent-out parents to reach
down for the price of yet another plaything for their already toy-glutted
children. What could the toy companies possibly do to produce that
unlikely behavior? Some have tried a greatly increased advertising
campaign, others have reduced prices during the slack period, but
neither of those standard sales devices has proved successful. Not only
are both tactics costly, but both have also been ineffective in increasing
sales to desired levels. Parents are simply not in a toy-buying mood,
and the influences of advertising or reduced expense are not enough
to shake that stony resistance.
Certain large toy manufacturers, however, think they have found a
solution. It’s an ingenious one, involving no more than a normal advert-
ising expense and an understanding of the powerful pull of the need
for consistency. My first hint of how the toy companies’ strategy worked
came after I fell for it and then, in true patsy form, fell for it again.
It was January, and I was in the town’s largest toy store. After pur-
chasing all too many gifts there for my son a month before, I had sworn
not to enter that place or any like it for a long, long time. Yet there I
was, not only in the diabolic place but also in the process of buying my
son another expensive toy—a big, electric road-race set. In front of the
road-race display, I happened to meet a former neighbor who was
buying his son the same toy. The odd thing was that we almost never
saw each other anymore. In fact, the last time was a year earlier in that
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 49