The need for Social Proof

Consumers need the ‘social proof’ of other people doing or buying something first before they themselves feel comfortable doing it or buying it themselves.

Ever wondered why canned laughter is added to the recordings of comedy shows like Kapil Sharma’s Comedy Nights, Friends, etc? The creative people who make these shows don’t like, most viewers complain they don’t like it, but the laughter stays. This is because; it has been found that viewers find the gags funnier when they hear people laughing, even if the laughter is not real.

A black incident supporting this notion was the case of ‘copy-cat’ suicides, in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. Here, 910 members of Jim Jone’s People’s temple cult took their lives by drinking from vats of poisoned soft drink. How was it possible that nearly a thousand people died so willingly at the same time? It was found that most of the cult members had been recruited from San Francisco. It is said that the isolation of being in a foreign country contributed to the natural human tendency to ‘do what others like us are doing’.

A lot of brands use this technique of subtly or directly providing the social proof to the consumers thus encouraging them and making them feel confident about buying the products. When a celebrity endorses a brand, it not only builds the brand equity but also portrays the brand as reliable thus providing the essential social proof that would make the consumers confident of buying the product. When a brand advertises its testimonials, like the testimonial for Revital tablets by Salman Khan, consumers get this proof and are more comfortable ‘doing what others are doing’.

Our unwillingness to use a product until plenty of other people are, is a useful way of knowing if something is good or not. People prefer going to a pani-puri wala or a bhajiya-wala where there is considerable amount of waiting. People prefer going to restaurants which at least some of the friends have endorsed personally based on their own experience.

In a way, this also testifies the close human association with the herd mentality, willingly or unwillingly. People generally want to avoid risk of being the first to try something new, being afraid of how they will be perceived in the society and the people around them. When a lot of people have done or bought something before them, they tend to blend into the crowd. This is one reason why a lot of brands make claims in their marketing communications and advertisements like ‘the trusted brand of crores of Indians’, ‘with 2.5 million active users’, ‘functioning in 75 countries worldwide’, etc. These claims flatter the risk-avoiding portion of the brain and provide the social proof of the buying behavior for the brand.

At the end of the day, human beings are social animals and tend to want to blend into the society. This makes them seek social proof and want to do or buy what others are doing or buying. And when marketers and advertisers remember this, they increase the chances of success of the brand.