I've Made Up My Mind!

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The 7^th force of Influence discussed in Dr. Cialdini’s book is Commitment and Consistency.

Commitment and Consistency:

Commitment and Consistency with influence is the concept that we tend to justify and stick to decisions that we make.

Especially, decisions that are difficult or painful to make. Even more so actually!

Have you ever seen someone make a decision and afterward the other option was really the smarter choice but the person is so hard-headed they stick and won’t even consider switching?

Then you have seen commitment and consistency in play.

This is so powerful that car dealerships use this as a technique.

Imagine this,  you go to trade in your car for a new one, and you find a car that you like but may be a little outside your price range.

Then the salesman walks up and you guys start talking. He offers you $700 above the Kelly Blue Book Value for the car you want to trade in.

You get so excited and want to take advantage of the opportunity!

You go into the office to finalize the paperwork, and while you two are working it out, the manager notifies you that the salesman wasn’t authorized to offer you that, but the dealership would pay the Kelly Blue Book Value of the car.

What do you do?

It is easy to say get up and walk out while reading this however Dr. Cialdini explains that most people in this scenario would continue with buying the car even though the reason they decided to proceed with the decision was no longer a factor.

But they had already made their decision.

Things like this are probably why people hate car shopping.

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