Playing hard to get (in marketing)

There’s a pizza shop in my neighborhood with really weird hours. They’re closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but then they’re open on Wednesdays again. They don’t do lunch because they’re only open from 5-9pm. Except on Sundays, they do do lunch, but then they close at 6pm. 

Even though the hours make it harder to get pizza, I think about it way more than I should. There are other pizza places in my neighborhood open normal hours, 11am-11pm every day, but I don’t think about them. I’m often wondering to myself, “Is the pizza place with the weird hours open right now?”

We’ve become so used to the “always-on” approach of companies like Amazon. We know we can get anything we want delivered in a day or two from Amazon, so there’s not much friction at any moment to buy anything. It’ll still be there, the instant we decide we want it. When businesses add a layer of friction in this digital era, it isn’t always a bad thing. It forces us to stop and think about them.

Friction can be a good thing in sales, assuming you have a good product, because it forces the customer to think about you and to make a decision. You can try to take an Amazon approach, but the trouble is, you need ”always-on” logistics to provide “always-on” service. Basically no one has that, but we still try to accommodate our customers and clients in the same way. 

B&H Photo won’t even accept online orders during the Sabbath. No Chick-Fil-A is ever open on a Sunday. Digital creator Tom Noske only opens sales for his teaching cohorts ten days at a time—then he closes the cart. These are constraints that we’ve come to accept, and even plan around. Mathematics says that you’ll make more money if you sell around the clock. But psychology says otherwise.