Reward vs Expectancy in Marketing

Buy one get one free

Happy Hour 

3 months subscription for the price of 1 

What’s the allure of these well known marketing tricks? You’re getting more than you bargained for, it feels like a treat, you would be losing out if you didn’t get it. 

All true, but I want to dig a little deeper…

Why do we feel a rush of joy at realizing a purchase is cheaper than what we expected? Much of this has to do with dopamine. 

A bit of a buzzword at the moment, dopamine is the brain’s reward signal and it controls our levels of motivation. 

So when we get an extra drink at happy hour, this signals an increase in dopamine.

As a central part of the reward system, dopamine works in relation to expectancy. 

Simply, if we don’t expect a reward and it is better than we expected, we experience a greater surge in dopamine than if we had expected it.

In reverse, if we don’t expect a reward, and the reward is bad, it feels worse than if we had expected it, resulting in a greater dip in dopamine.

Offers such as these play upon our expectations by giving us more than we expected to get.

How to leverage this? 

• Provide an offer that supersedes expectations in two ways:

• How much greater it is than expected 

• How different it is to what was expected 

How do we actualise this? 

Differentiation:

• Alternative platforms, modes of communication. I.e immersive experiences, play on 3 dimensional spaces. 

• Creative and unexpected brand affiliations - Heinz partnering with Absolut to make a vodka pasta sauce earned 500m impressions on social media

How much greater the reward is depends on how much a brand can afford to give away for free, but there are tricks and ways around this that mean brands don’t have to spend too much to give their audience that extra surge in dopamine and motivation to re engage. 

• Buy one get one drink free that comes with card with a proverb on it, make it branded and people can give it to a friend (word of mouth marketing)

• Give a free bowl of popcorn with drinks, always a nice extra touch, add some smarties inside, and each person who gets a red smartie gets a free shot of their choice 

Here are just a few examples of marketing that can help to peak memorability by tapping into dopamine levels in the reward system. The key? Unexpected positive touchpoints.