Most behaviors involve a motor action.

Therefore, try activating the muscles in this behavior.

In one study, participants were asked to turn a knob once they understood a sentence, and they turned the knob faster when this rotation matched the sentence (e.g., Katie opened a water bottle) because their muscles became activated (Zwaan & Taylor, 2006).

In fact, any motor action should induce more physical actions.

Customers who type their query into an ecommerce website are more likely to buy than customers who speak their query (King et al., 2022). If you're already typing, it feels easy to type a credit card. Vocal interactions would require a larger mental shift to imagine this behavior.

How to Apply

• Say Click, Tap, or Type. Merely reading these words can ease these behaviors.

• Tell Retail Passerbys to Walk In. Replace "we're open" with a more direct "Walk in, we're open."
• Show Hands. Add hand graphics on tip jars, donation bins, vending machines, or any medium where customers insert money. Customers feel ownership of these hands (Luangrath et al., 2022).

• Show Graspable Cues Near Writing Tasks. Shoppers were 3x more likely to write their contact details for a loyalty program when the tabletop poster showed a vegetable peeler with the handle on the right, which primed the motor action of writing for right-handed shoppers (the majority of the population; Maille et al., 2020).

• Insert Textures Near Buttons. Customers can imagine this bumpy texture, and they blame this imageability on their desire to touch.

Caveats

• Prime Speaking in Sales Scenarios. Most people renew an insurance contract by talking to a sales rep. In these scenarios in which speaking is a key modality, vocal bots convert higher than motor interactions (Zierau et al., 2023).

• King, D., Auschaitrakul, S., & Lin, C. W. J. (2022). Search modality effects: merely changing product search modality alters purchase intentions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 50(6), 1236-1256.
• Luangrath, A. W., Peck, J., Hedgcock, W., & Xu, Y. (2022). Observing product touch: The vicarious haptic effect in digital marketing and virtual reality. Journal of Marketing Research, 59(2), 306-326.
• Maille, V., Morrin, M., & Reynolds-McIlnay, R. (2020). On the other hand…: Enhancing promotional effectiveness with haptic cues. Journal of Marketing Research, 57(1), 100-117.
• Zwaan, R. A., & Taylor, L. J. (2006). Seeing, acting, understanding: motor resonance in language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135(1), 1.
• Zierau, N., Hildebrand, C., Bergner, A., Busquet, F., Schmitt, A., & Marco Leimeister, J. (2023). Voice bots on the frontline: Voice-based interfaces enhance flow-like consumer experiences... Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51(4), 823-842.