Imagine that one day you and a friend meet for coffee. After you order and pay for your drinks, the barista hands you a loyalty card and explains that each time you buy a cup of coffee they will stamp your card. Once you have collected ten stamps you can claim a free cup of coffee. You take the card from the barista and notice that she has already stamped your card twice to get you on your way toward that free cup of coffee.
The progress you have now made toward your free cup of coffee could be framed in one of two ways. Either you are 20 percent of the way toward achieving that free cup of coffee or you have 80 percent remaining. But which is more likely to motivate you to complete the task?
It turns out the answer isn’t relevant just to a coffee shop owner looking to influence her customers to be more loyal, but to anyone whose challenge requires them to persuade others (and even themselves) to complete tasks. (And by the way, before you continue reading, you should know that you have already completed 10 percent of this particular chapter of The SMALL BIG.)
Persuasion researchers Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach thought that an individual’s motivation to complete a task could be improved by making a small change in where they focused their attention. They hypothesized that, at the begining of a task, getting individuals to concentrate on the smaller amount of progress they had already made toward a goal would be more motivating than focusing on the larger amount of effort that remained.
In order to test their ideas, Koo and Fishbach conducted a fascinating series of studies, including one in a popular sushi restaurant. Over a period of four months some 900 regular customers were enrolled in a loyalty program where they would receive a free lunch of their choice after purchasing ten lunches. Half the customers in the study were given a blank card and were told that a sushi-shaped stamp would be added to their card each time they bought lunch. By providing a stamp for each purchase, a customer’s attention was directed to the progress they were making toward their end goal. Let’s call these customers the “progress accumulated” group.
The other half of the customers were given a card that was already printed with ten sushi-shaped stamps on it. Each time these folks bought a lunch, instead of having a stamp added, a stamp was removed with a hole puncher. As a result, the attention of these customers was focused on how much progress remained before they received their free lunch. We’ll call these customers the “progress remaining” group.
At this point we should highlight the fact that because this study was carried out in a working restaurant there were a range of different transactions. For example, a customer who just bought lunch for themselves would get one stamp added or taken away on their loyalty card, meaning that they made only a little bit of progress toward their free lunch. But a customer who bought lunch for themselves and a group of friends or business associates would receive multiple stamps (or have multiple stamps removed from their loyalty card), meaning they made lots of progress toward theirs.
Analyzing the results, the researchers found that those customers who made only a little bit of initial progress by buying lunch just for themselves or a small number of other people were much more likely to return to the restaurant in the “progress accumulated” condition. However the reverse was true for customers who made a lot of initial progress—those customers were more likely to return if their attention was focused on the “progress remaining” to get the free lunch.
Why the difference? Because in both cases customers were more motivated to complete the goal when their focus was directed to the smaller number—whether that small number concerned the progress already made (you’re 30 percent of the way to a free lunch) or the effort that remained (you’ve only 30 percent to go).
Koo and Fishbach coined the phrase “small-area hypothesis” for this concept.
So the implication is clear: Whether your goal is to increase the success of your company’s customer loyalty program or simply to encourage others (or even yourself) to be more motivated to complete a task, this study suggests that you can increase the chances of success by, in the early stages, having your audience (or yourself) focus on the small amount of progress that has already been made rather than on the larger amount that remains.
One reason for this is because in the early stages of a task, focusing on the smaller number appeals to the human desire to behave as efficiently as possible. An action that moves someone from 20 percent completion of a task to 40 percent completion has doubled their progress—which seems like a very efficient action indeed. Contrast that with moving from 60 percent completion to 80 percent, which, although the same 20 percent difference, represents progress of just a quarter of the total completed.
As a result, a manager or supervisor, keen to keep her staff motivated to reach a particular sales goal or performance target, might find that their early motivation can be maintained by providing feedback on the progress that her team members have already made by telling her staff, “We’re only one week into the new quarter and you’ve already achieved 15 percent of your quarterly target,” rather than “We’ve made a great start in our first week and now we’ve got 85 percent of the way to go.”
Similarly a person keen to motivate himself to regularly save a little spare cash to buy a new high-definition TV, or a couple looking to pay off a credit card or personal loan, could improve their commitment to their financial plans by focusing on the small but important progress they have already made toward their goals. Banks and financial societies might even help their customers by signaling the progress they have made toward a savings or repayment plan on their statements and online banking pages, in much the same way that LinkedIn signals the progress people have made toward completing their online profile.
But remember the customers in the sushi restaurant who initially bought lots of lunches, meaning they immediately accumulated stamps that pushed them much nearer to the completion of the loyalty card? In their case the progress remaining was actually smaller than the progress accumulated. Remember too that they were much more likely to complete the task when their attention was focused on the smaller effort remaining.
This means that a small shift needs to be made when the halfway mark of any goal is reached. Once the halfway mark is passed, people’s motivation to complete a task will typically be higher when feedback is shifted to the smaller amount of effort remaining. So messages like “You only have 20 percent left to achieve your goal” will likely be more effective than “You are 80 percent of the way to achieving your goal.”
So with just 20 percent of this chapter left for you to read, now might be a good time to provide some practical examples of how this small shift in focus could lead to potentially big differences in your influence and persuasion attempts!
From airlines and hotels to coffee shops and cosmetics retailers, many businesses operate customer reward programs that have a feedback mechanism already built in, so that their customers know how much progress they are making toward that flight upgrade, free night, or, in the case of coffeehouses, their next free double chocolate mocha! The small-area hypothesis suggests that regardless of where a particular customer is on that reward journey, feedback should always focus on the small area regardless of whether it is progress made or effort remaining. Frequent flyer statements should highlight the miles earned toward an upgrade up until the halfway point and then shift to highlighting miles remaining to reach the reward. Baristas should verbally signal to customers the small progress made or the small effort remaining when stamping customers’ coffee cards.
Similarly, those involved in coaching and training others should be careful to frame their feedback and recommendations in a way that highlights the smaller area of attainment achieved or remaining. Managers and supervisors looking to influence and persuade staff to improve their skills might include such small-area signals on employees’ personal development plans. One way this could be done would be to add the percentage of progress an employee has made toward achieving a particular objective on their development plan, making sure to switch at the halfway point from progress made to progress remaining. This small change increases the chances that an employee’s attention will be focused on the smaller area, which could lead to big differences in their performance.
And when it comes to motivating yourself to get through that 60-minute Spinning class or next weekend’s 10K run, a focus on the time or distance endured in the early stages before transferring to the time or distance remaining toward the end could help get you through such challenges. Alternatively, to add momentum to your personal weight-loss program (or a month-long smoking abstinence), emphasize the weight you’ve already lost (or days without a cigarette) in the early stages before directing attention to weight still needed to be lost (or smoke-free days left) to reach your desired goal.