Manipulative Tactics of Marketing and Persuasion

Manipulative Tactics of marketing and persuasion are those tactics used by companies to manipulate a customer to make a purchase decision. These tactics generally include hacking the emotions of the customer and making them forcefully buy the products of the company. It is a shady marketing and persuasion technique of marketing the products, where the company has to be very careful regarding the customer experience. If the customer experience is in the red, the things can go south of the sales and reputation of the product and the company.

There are many reasons why many companies would resort to such tactics. One of the most common reasons is high competition and a push to increase their margins. Industries with high competition means that the companies would need to make a quick sale before their competitor reaches the customers. Also, manipulative tactics help in quickly selling a product. Manipulating customers emotions would make the customer make a kind of an impulse decision, which means, the customers will buy that product without giving much thought. Quick sales growth means rapid achievement of profitability for companies.

This tactic is used by ed-tech companies like BYJU’s. In our country, the parents want to provide top class education to their children and prepare them for Board Exams, entrance exams like JEE, NEET which will give their children a ticket to the top tier educational institutes of India. The Sales team of BYJU’s knew this very well. What they did was that, they create a fear in the minds of the parents that their children aren’t prepared for the challenge of Board and Entrance exams and then smartly present their products with latest technologies as a life saver, making a promise that they will help the student get through the challenges and have a successful life. The problem with this is that those made by BYJU’s are generally false promises and have generally failed to deliver towards the standards they promised. Also, this tactic of making the student feel inadequate puts more pressure on the student to perform in the exams. Their products also put a financial strain on people from the lower-economic backgrounds by playing around with this tactic, which tarnished their reputation.

So, that’s why, I feel that using such manipulative tactics are risky and should not be used by the companies to force purchases from the customer. Everyone now know about the shady tactics of BYJU’s, permanently tarnishing their reputation and now the company is in a very difficult position. Companies must focus on developing the quality of their product, such that the customers themselves buy products without much sales tactics.

By Viranshu Pitale