In an analysis of customer behavior named “Tightwads and Spendthrifts,” Rick, Cryder, and Loewenstein identify that the level to which folks will invest is determined by the psychological “pain” that the spending causes. Folks will invest, they argue, until it hurts.

In unique, they identify three kinds of men and women:

The “unconflicted,” or the biggest group, devote an typical level of cash just before discomfort ensues. For these people, marketing and advertising need to sway them to improve their discomfort threshold.
The “spendthrifts’ invest readily and conveniently. Common advertising methods is often employed to attract this sort of consumer.
The hardest men and women to reach are the “tightwads” who take many persuading to portion with their cash mainly because they hit the pain threshold sooner. Minimizing the getting discomfort for this group is definitely the secret to results.

The book you're reading bases all of its marketing strategies on this premise laid out by Rick, Cryder, and Lowenstein. Promoting a solution to a person requires the marketer, I contend, to find strategies to move the meter of one’s discomfort threshold by signifies of some kind of reframing. And what might be a lot more potent in the process of reframing discomfort than by tying our spending habits to our pretty identity? The athlete who runs until she or he can hardly stroll views the lactic acid accumulating in his or her legs not as pain but as an investment in future glory around the field. The law student who pulls an all-nighter studying for an exam is just not experiencing the low of discomfort, but is alternatively preparing for the higher of accomplishment in the classroom.

So when the marketer frames the product in such a way that spending is tied to a larger truth in regards to the identity of the customer, then there ceases to be a discomfort threshold simply because there ceases to be any pain at all. Acquiring a product is not observed by the consumer in terms of how much it drains from one’s bank account, you see, but is instead observed with regards to how much it adds to one’s identity.

The rest on the book lays out for the reader 4 in the most potent facets of our identities as they relate to our consumerist tendencies: men and women today are specifically inattentive, trendy, needy, and tribal.