Marketing
Pain may be useful in making consumers create stories of adventurous and fulfilling lives. In the article, Rebecca Scott, Bernard Cova, and Julien Cayla are exploring the reasons consumers may opt to participate in events and consumption that are painful to their bodies and their wellbeing in general. The article is an ethnography study on painful adventures where participants subject themselves to electric shocks and fire. The article posits that consumers usually seek to reinvent themselves through subjecting their bodies to pain and sharp focus. Painful experience serves as a regenerative escape from a self that is faced with pressure from everyday activity (Scott et al., 2017). The pain serves as a temporary relief from the conflicted self through flooding the consciousness with unpleasantness. Different consumers may have different definitions of fulfilled lives. On one hand, a number of consumers always spend billions every way to find relief for their pains as a means of living fulling lives. Another type of consumer seeks to inflict wounds and marks on their body as a way of living a fulfilled life.
According to Scott, Cova, and Cayla, Tough Mudder, a choreographed event that involves the infliction of pain among participants, provides a perfect example of marketing pain. Tough Mudder dramatizes pain as a way of reinventing the participants. The event induces the participants to a corporeal rebirth and makes them realize their physicality (Scott et al., 2017). The painful events serve as a narrative resource for the participants who feel enthralled by the experience at Tough Mudder. Extraordinary experiences such as Tough Mudder is useful in making the consumers transcend their daily lives, which they may regard as monotonous and lacking surprises. Intense experiences act as regenerative experiences that help in the escape of the tedious everyday lives.
Limitations
The ethnography designed by the researcher has not sufficiently elaborated on the psychological component of pain and extraordinary experience. A rational human being is supposed to be averse to pain, especially self-inflicted pain. For the article to be effective in its message, it would have illustrated the psychological state of the participants of the extraordinary experiences. It can easily be assumed that the participants are facing issues such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorders hence are seeking escape through the infliction of pain and extraordinary experiences. Tough Mudder and other extraordinary experiences sell dramatized pain as a signal for the rebirth of the participants to corporeality. However, this may not be the case for all participants because of personal and health reasons. For example, Tough Mudder is supposed to sell dramatized pain that signifies the reinvention of an individual. This may not be the case for an individual faced with underlying psychological conditions.
The research has overstated the role of extraordinary experience is to escape from a monotonous life. According to the article, the appeal of extraordinary and intense experience can be derived from the discomfort they generate. Even though consumers may seek extraordinary experiences, pain is usually not among their plans. For example, the people undertaking skydiving usually seek the excitement far up the sky and not the possibility they may fall. The claim by the article that enduring pain is part of the extraordinary experience is an overstatement because sharp focus into the body may be harmful to health in the long run. The claim does not take into account the fact that rational human beings usually seek to live healthy lifestyles that is free from self-inflicted pain.
Research Idea: Which Customers are more prone to pain?
Market Statistics about Pain Marketing
Risk-taking behavior may subject the consumer to pain, such as loss of income or low-quality products. According to McCrae and Costa (2008), consumers who possess openness as a personal trait are usually ready to embrace fresh ideas, embrace new things, and novel experience. Such consumers are always open-minded and approach different products with curiosity. Open consumers are also enthusiastic in the pursuit of new and creative adventures. In addition, consumers exhibiting openness as a personal trait tend to be good at creating connections between different ideas and concepts. On the other hand, individuals not exhibiting low levels of openness tend to be conservative and reluctant to change. Such people prefer routines and traditions hence often find it difficult to cope with changes.
Research about Pain Marketing
The research by McGhee et al. (2012) provides an example of how openness relates to risk-taking behavior. Pain marketing relates to the purchase of products that are associated with a self-inflicted physical or emotional injury. According to Hamid (2020), risk-taking behavior relates to pain marketing because it may result in substantial losses. For example, a consumer exhibiting openness as a character trait may decide to invest all his or her income in an emerging market. This risk-taking behavior may result in pain as the consumer may lose a considerable amount of investment if market directions go in the opposite direction. On the contrary, a less open individual is averse to risk-taking; hence cannot be subject to pain marketing.
Novel Research Idea
In this research, I want to investigate the relationship between customers’ openness as a personality trait and the extent to which they are prone to pain. Openness can be associated with other attributes such as neuroticism and extraversion, which explain why consumers who are characterized by openness are prone to pain. The individuals tend to be open and innovative hence more prone to consequences of their behavior. The people also get easily interested in abstract ideas without substantive evidence that the ideas will work. They are, therefore, more prone to pain that comes from the possibility of the ideas not working their ways. According to Hamid (2020), emerging markets provide the best platforms where openness and proneness to pain can be investigated. According to Hamid, an open consumer will invest in an emerging market without due diligence hence is more prone to pain if the investments do not go as expected.
The Importance of the Relationship
Knowing the relationship between consumers’ openness and proneness to pain is important because it illustrates the risks associated with being too much open-minded as a consumer. Open-mindedness exposes consumers to pain because of their character makes them too trusting and cannot conduct due diligence on a particular product.
Prior Research about Personality Traits
According to McGhee et al. (2012), consumers characterized by openness are more prone to pain than consumers exhibiting low levels of openness. In the research conducted among preadolescents, McGhee et al. found a connection between openness and risk-taking behavior. According to the research, consumers who possess openness as a personality trait are more prone to pain than those with low levels of openness because of their risk-taking and adventurous nature.
References
Hamid, F. S. (2020). The relationship between risk propensity, risk perception and risk-taking behaviour in an emerging market. International Journal of Banking and Finance, 10(1), 134-146.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa Jr, P. T. (2008). The five-factor theory of personality.
McGhee, R. L., Ehrler, D. J., Buckhalt, J. A., & Phillips, C. (2012). The relation between five-factor personality traits and risk-taking behavior in preadolescents. Psychology, 3(8), 558.
Scott, R., Cayla, J., & Cova, B. (2017). Selling pain to the saturated self. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(1), 22-43.