Targeting the Gullible Market

A brand is trusted by its existing customers because of its past behavior: if the brand kept the promises it made, then it is trusted to repeat the same behavior in the future, and this trust extends to any new promises that the brand makes to the customer that has already experienced its reliability.  But when approaching a prospect, who has not interacted with the brand, earning trust is difficult – the brand has not had the opportunity to keep its promises to the prospect, and the promise itself is not trustworthy because it comes from an unknown brand.

Granted, some level of trust depends upon the trustor – whether or not the prospect has a trusting nature.   In general, a brand that approaches any market can depend upon the trust of the most gullible members of that segment – but a more measured approach would consider the qualities of an individual who will trust without experience and seek to define a target market in which gullibility is baked in.

The inherent problem is that gullible people are not respected people – their peers and acquaintances know them to be exceptionally gullible and do not put much credit in their endorsements.    In that way, a brand that targets the gullible may have some success in gaining the initial trust of people whose recommendation carries little weight with the rest of the market.   Hence the short-term and unsustainable success of many new products.

And even the gullible market segment is not sustainable: the most gullible individuals can be fooled once into putting trust in a brand – but if the brand fails to keep its promise to them, then it will be difficult to make a second sale even to the same individual.   They are likely to extend credit to brands once, but not a second time once their trust has been violated.

One notable exception are individuals in whom there is an unfortunate coincidence of gullibility and narcissism: the person who has been tricked, but whose ego will not allow them to admit that they have been tricked.  These individuals will give rave reviews of horrible products, pretending to be satisfied so as to avoid admitting having made a mistake.  Going by the number of five-start product reviews on websites, there are quite a few of them, who feel compelled to repurchase and advocated for a bad product to maintain their self-esteem.

But, again, this leads to the problem of second-hand trustworthiness: it is not only the brand, but its users and advocates, that must be regarded as trustworthy in order for the brand  to gain acceptance in the broader market.  The testimony of dupes and fools is no more convincing that first-hand promises made by a brand, and it may in fact be more damaging to have the wrong kind of brand advocates.