Amazon’s Guide To Marketing Psychology

Abhishek Shah
Better Marketing
Published in
4 min readOct 26, 2022

Amazon’s the king of “buy stuff you didn’t need.”

But that’s no accident.

The website is filled with psychological hacks designed to make you spend more.

Here are 10 examples that’ll blow your mind:

1. Place strategic defaults

People are lazy, and Amazon knows it.

So what do they do?

Turn subscriptions into the default (here’s a quick guide to help you do the same):

From Amazon

2. Track what they save you

When we try to cancel our Prime subscriptions, Amazon displays the amount saved with its services.

Hard to say no to $313.38 saved in delivery fees, you know?

Phil Agnew

3. Spotlight savings

Even before Amazon displays the price

They show us what we can save

In an enlarged and bright red font

And who doesn’t like a good bargain?

From Amazon

4. Strikethrough higher prices

After looking at the $97.48, the new, lower price seems like a winner.

But if I worked at Amazon, I would:

• increase the font of the original price

• place it right above the new price

Intensifying the anchoring effect.

From Amazon

5. Present visually empty carts

People have a tendency to fill containers to their full capacity because of everyday experiences.

The same happens with Amazon’s carts.

The empty space below that book compels people to fill it up!

From Amazon

6. Reduce the price of fonts

When prices are visually smaller, we mistake them for smaller purchases.

Now you’ll notice how small Amazon sizes its prices on the purchase page:

From Amazon

7. Use the color red

Red fonts trigger action.

Especially against a predominantly white background, like that of Amazon:

From Amazon

8. Converge unrelated prices

Amazon smartly places unrelated lower prices and terms like “Free” right below the selling price.

The result? We converge these desirable terms with the actual price.

Making it look like another good deal:

From Amazon

9. Show some negative reviews

Somewhat counterintuitive, but Amazon includes top critical reviews on its customer reviews page.

But that’s actually a neat sales tactic:

• their content seems more credible

• the power of contrast makes the positive reviews look even stronger

From Amazon

It’s called the blemishing effect, and I covered it in last week’s edition!

10. Assort your offer appropriately

Horizontal assortment highlights the variety and is best for skimmers

But it backfires when people are looking for a specific product

And Amazon seems to apply this:

i. Horizontal Assortment

From Amazon

ii. Vertical Assortment

The vertical assortment is more beneficial for specific products.

From Amazon

That’s the 10!

Summary

10 science-backed marketing tactics from Amazon:

  1. Smaller fonts
  2. The red color
  3. Negative reviews
  4. Strategic defaults
  5. Price convergence
  6. Spotlighted savings
  7. The visually empty carts
  8. Strikethrough higher prices
  9. Tracking what they save you
  10. Horizontal vs vertical assortment

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Published in Better Marketing

A publication by and for marketers. We publish marketing inspiration, case studies, career advice, tutorials, industry news, and more.

Written by Abhishek Shah

👀 40K+ followers on Twitter | 🧠 The Marketing Psychologist | ✍️ Leverage psychology to build your business: psychologyofmarketing.io

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