Nudge refers to a way to encourage consumers to make the right choices. It is a way to naturally turn your attention as if you poke your side. Nudge strategies drive positive buying behavior for businesses and products.
Nudge became known to the world through the book “Nudge”, co-published by Professor Richard Thaler, Behavioral Economist at the University of Chicago, and Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard University Law School.
Nudge focuses on the power that drives natural selection, not push. Is it because of this feature? In the case of "Nudge" marketing, it does not highlight the merit of the product or expose the product itself. It just makes the consumer behave naturally and engage.
Case of nudge effects
A leading example of Nudge is the man urinals at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Schiphol Airport has a fly picture in the center of the man urinal. Men who watched the fly were concentrating on matching the fly when urinating, resulting in an 80% reduction in the amount of urine that protruded out of the toilet. So famous example?
Worldwide environmental protection organization WWF has used nudge to save paper towels. WWF shaped a map-like hole in the paper towel case to visualize the disappear of the paper towel. This enabled us to effectively show that the woody forests gradually disappear every time we use paper towel, and we were able to induce them to naturally conserve paper towel sparingly.
American eco-design group Ryan harc designed a time switch to show how long electricity is being used. When you turn it on for a long period of time, you are guided to turn off the power.
Korean designer “Byun eunji” have designed a dial-type faucet. It is a good example that you can adjust the amount of water to use as a dial type faucet so that you do not need to use a lot of water unnecessarily.
Nudge Marketing Case
What about marketing with a Nudge? There are many good cases of nudge marketing.
Volkswagen of Germany raised the use of stairs by installing a piano-sounding staircase through the “The Fun Theory” campaign. This campaign has increased stairway usage by an average of 66%.
Nike campaigned to place a basketball trash bin on the street. After placing basketball trunks in the streets, the garbage collection rate on the streets has increased tremendously.
According to Professor Richard Taller, there are three principles to follow when using a nudge. If you do not obey these three principles, it could be a bad “nudge”.
- Every nudge must be transparent, and never mislead the other.
- If you do not want to participate in nudge, you should be able to get out easily.
- There must be sufficient reason to believe that the behavior induced through the nudge makes the lives of those affected better.