The iPhone changed everything.
It’s one of the most desirable and innovative products in the world.
Only creative, brilliant geniuses — like you — own an iPhone.
At least, that’s what they want you to think.
Apple are masters of creating a brand that people want to be a part of — innovative, creative, a little bit rebellious. But also really expensive. Unsurprisingly, Apple uses some tricky psychological tactics to get you to shell out so much cash for an iPhone.
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1. Apple Appeals to Our Emotions
You might think there’s a logical reason why you’re an Apple fan. Their products are easy to use, they’re beautiful, and they have the best apps. But that’s not why you bought an iPhone.
When it comes to decision making, our minds don’t really care too much about logic. Studies show that most of our decisions are made subconsciously, driven by factors we don’t register or even understand.
Apple realized one critical thing about consumer decision-making. It’s driven by emotion, not logic. It’s not about the phone. It’s about how the phone makes us feel.
And people use products like the iPhone to signal other people who we are. Or at least who we want to them to think we are. Psychologists call this behavior “self-signaling” and it’s an incredibly powerful marketing lever.
2. Apple Believes in Simplicity
One of Apple’s core principles is simplicity. Its minimalist design and product-focused marketing are a sensory experience created to drive desire for the iPhone.
There aren’t any extra bumps or rivets. The iPhone is shiny, sleek, and perfectly proportioned. Even its packaging focuses on the feeling of slowly revealing your iPhone in a way that builds suspense and desire.
It’s down to a psychological principle called the Simplicity Theory.
What is Simplicity Theory?
This principle says that people love and prefer simplicity, and it’s uniquely attractive to our brains.
The Simplicity Index, created by consultancy Siegel+Gale, is a yearly ranking of brands with “simple” experiences. According to their research, simple experiences have a number of business benefits:
- Simplicity drives love: 64% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand because of simple experience.
- Simplicity drives growth: Since 2009, a stock portfolio made up of the simplest publicly-traded brands (as defined by Siegel+Gale) has outperformed the market by 686%.
- Simplicity drives sales: 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for uncomplicated experiences.
Apple’s product-focused ads drill into your subconscious that iPhones are simple but luxurious and well-designed. See enough of them and the iPhone becomes really hard to resist.
3. Apple are Masters of Status
Apple has the reputation of being envelope pushers. Sometimes to its benefit, like with the iPhone, and sometimes not, like with the Newton (look that one up, kids).
Apple push innovation at every turn — announcing some new technological breakthrough mysteriously timed to whenever there’s a new model iPhone to sell. And you believe it because of the phone’s sleek design and innovative reputation. You’re attracted to it because new things kick up a little bit of dopamine that gets us interested, and some fear that we might be only ones without this new sexy phone.
That combination of innovation, style, and desire makes the iPhone a powerful status symbol . And trying to attain status is a powerful driver of human behavior. Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga put it this way,
“When you get up in the morning…you think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers.”
Turns out, whether it’s a yacht, a Ferrari, a Patek Philippe watch, or an iPhone, there are several elements that make a product feel higher status: Exclusivity, combined with Authenticity and High Price.
Exclusivity & Scarcity: We Want What We Can’t Have
Have you ever noticed that when the new iPhone launches, there’s a line around the Apple store of people waiting to get it right away?
Is it because Apple’s really bad at forecasting demand for the iPhone?
No, it’s because their pre-launch advertising is designed to not only drive demand but to make customers think that supplies are limited. But actually, there are almost never iPhone shortages just the illusion that you might not be able to get your hands on one right away.
Apple know that the psychological and economic principle of Scarcity is a powerful driver of desire, so they stoke the flames of doubt in their biggest fans, who stand in line for the new iPhone. And when other people see the die-hards standing in line they think:
“Oh man, I better stand in line too. I don’t really want an iPhone but what if they run out? Nobody ever stands in line for a Pixel phone.”
High Price: Why We Want Expensive Products More
We all know iPhones are expensive. But making their phones expensive is actually a genius business move by Apple, because when it comes to price we’re easily influenced.
The economic principle Irrational Value Assessment helps explain how and why we’re so easy to manipulate. It says people don’t value products objectively, instead we figure out how much something should cost based on context cues and how they make us feel. Price is one of the indicators that something might be high quality.
Making the iPhone expensive is a part of Apple’s strategy to drive demand because the high price makes people feel like it’s a status symbol. If everybody could afford it, it wouldn’t make the people that bought it feel as good about themselves.
The Bottom Line
Apple are obviously skilled at building brands that aren’t just attractive to customers, but that convert that attraction to sales. In 2020, they became the world’s first $2T (yes, “t” as in trillion) company after nearly going under in 1997. And part of their success is down to its use of psychology and behavioral science — knowingly or not.
If you want to apply psychology and behavioral science like Apple, start by asking yourself questions like these:
- Self-Signalling: What do we want our products to signal to customers? What should they be trying to achieve psychologically by buying our products?
- Simplicity: How complicated are products and customer experience? Are we making it easy, or hard, for customers understand our brand and buy from us?
- Status: Is our product a status symbol? Could it be (and is becoming a status symbol right for our brand)? How might our price and positioning in the market help us become a status symbol?
- Exclusivity & Scarcity: How might offering less of something, or offering it for a smaller amount of time drive desire for our product or brand?
- Irrational Value Assessment: Do we think about the psychological side of pricing? How might we design the context of purchase decisions to help make the case for our product’s price?