Trade psychology

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Trade psychology is the science of human behavior and experience in trade and the underlying motivations. As part of market psychology, it belongs to business psychology .

Areas and goals

At its core, trade psychology pursues the goal of examining, safeguarding and controlling all decisions made by trade management from a psychological perspective. On the one hand, it wants to provide existing concrete decision-making aids, and on the other hand, it wants to raise awareness of innovative, psychologically-oriented procedures.

In stationary retail in particular , it covers both psychostrategic , i.e. H. mainly basic, long-term decisions as well as psychotactic , d. H. mainly operational, short-term decisions by the commercial management . The typical psychostrategic decision-making fields include B. the choice of the company, the type of business, the size of the business, the business and internal location, decisions about organization, equipment and form of sale as well as personnel and image policy. Typical psychotactic decision-making areas include: B. Procurement, assortment, shop design, presentation, placement, price, service and communication policy, as well as work design policy. How broad the spectrum of psychological measures is can already be seen in contact with the customer. It is not only possible to agree to the willingness to buy before and during the purchase, but also to provide informational support after the purchase, for example through a pleasant, business-like shop atmosphere and the opportunity to have an undisturbed overview of the range, through calm consultations or through letters of thanks or individual written additional offers. The “satisfaction guarantee” announced by Brille-Fielmann when the contract was signed can also be counted as an example of post-purchase psychology.

Psychostrategic and tactical decisions are also becoming increasingly important in electronic commerce .

Despite its recourse to the methodological arsenal of psychology (e.g. behaviorism, cognitivism and psychoanalysis) and because of its dominant economic issues, trade psychology does not see itself as a branch of psychology, but - like trade marketing - as a branch of trade management theory . It can be divided into

  • Theoretical trade psychology (research and teaching with questions of trade theory),
  • Applied trade psychology (research and teaching with questions from the application fields of trade management) and
  • Practical retail psychology (diagnosis and therapy with questions from specific decision-making situations in retail management, especially retail marketing).

As retail psychology strives to optimize management solutions, it provides retail practitioners with suggestions in individual cases, for example for the optimal use of optical, acoustic, olfactory, haptic or sensory stimuli , for convincing shop design and product presentation or for improving employee motivation, but also for the recognition and mitigation of phobias of customers in the shopping situation ( resilience management ). In general, it raises awareness for behavior-oriented retail management. At the same time, the knowledge of trade psychology also helps customers to arm themselves against attempts at subliminal influence .

Retail psychology sees itself as a practical art teaching for responsible entrepreneurial and managerial behavior, which uses appropriate hypotheses, findings or methods of psychology for decision-making, but in no way as an uncritical guide to manipulation, i.e. H. for the elimination of market partners. Therefore, in addition to cognitive and legal limits , the teaching of psychology in retail always includes ethical limits in its analyzes. The term retail psychology is intended to concisely express the fact that the particularities, the diverse manifestations and the specific and complex decision-making situations of the retail business are analyzed from a psychological point of view.

reception

Retail psychology is increasingly being offered as a subject, specifically as part of bachelor's or master's degrees at German-speaking universities, technical colleges and professional academies where the subject of trade management (or trade marketing or marketing and distribution or business administration) is represented, especially at US universities as part of combined courses of study "Bachelor of Commerce / Bachelor of Psychology". In global electronic commerce, psychological aspects of online sales ( the power of trading ) play a significant role.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Otto Schenk: Psychology in trade. P. 19