Six behavioural traps that cost you money when buying a car – and how to neutralise them

It’s holiday season. Time for a slightly tongue in cheek guide to winning when you buy your next car. 

Let psychology be your sword and behavioural science be your shield as you enter into battle against seasoned sales professionals. First up…

Master your emotions. 

• The trap: The salesperson’s job is to get you to fall in love with the car.  They’ll ask you to “Imagine the car sitting on your driveway at home” and connect your phone. Don’t. If you allow emotions to creep into your decision, you will overspend.
• The strategy: Make your decisions before you go near a dealership in a cold, hyper-rational logical state. By all means get excited 3 months or 3 weeks before, just get it out of your system. 

Bring your own anchor

• The trap: allowing the salesperson to show you around. They’ll likely start with an expensive model first, before coming to the car your there to see. Before you know it: you have been anchored. Your price perceptions are muddled… danger!
• The strategy: you know the car you’re there to see. Not only that you’ve brought 5 print outs of comparable models with prices from other dealers around your target price.

Control the time horizon 

• The trap: It’s the salespersons job to create a sense of urgency. The standard method tool is scarcity via time-limited offers – for example “We’re offering a dealer contribution this week on that model”. 
• The strategy: preparation. You’ll already have an idea of available discounts and whether they recur before you walk in. There’s always another car if this one doesn’t work out.  

Focus on the total cost

• • The trap: thinking about today, not tomorrow. Q:“Carpathian Grey paint is lovely and only an extra £39 per month…what do you think darling” A: “Over the 4 year term that’s £1872. Darling.”

• The strategy: Abandon impulse, and quash your partner’s hopeless attempt at spontaneity. Ignore the affordability of a monthly payment, and think about the total cost. Get a calculator and work out what the car, the finance and the options bring you to. Even better: do an example before and bring it with you.   

Prepare for the game

• The trap: Subtle pressure-selling techniques often start when you least expect it: after you’ve agreed on the car’s price. Salespeople generate more commission from upselling peripherals like gap insurance, tyre insurance and paint protection than the car itself. You may be left alone to stew in silence as they “speak to their manager” once the peripherals have been presented. Say you don’t want them? You may be left in silence again as “they go to get something from the printer”. You’re tired, this is taking ages… 

• The strategy: Preparation. Know this is coming. Know what you want before you are offered it. Create an “implementation intention” of polite refusal “I’ve thought about this in detail before coming, and I’m afraid it’s not for me – but thank you so much for sharing it with me.” Pro tip: bring a novel to kill the time you are left to stew.  

Be nice – but remember you’re not there to make friends!

• The trap: As Dr Robert Cialdini makes clear in his book Influence, liking is a vital tool used by salespeople to secure a sale. The more you like someone, the more you’ll be persuaded by them. Invoking similarity is a shortcut to generate liking. “Oh you live in York? I went there on holiday, it’s beautiful isn’t it?”  
• The strategy: Remember this isn’t a social setting where social norms prevail. It is a market setting. Market norms are in force, so don’t let social norms be used against you. Pro tip: use the liking strategy on the salesperson before they try it on you. 

In summary

Renounce desire and prepare! Jettison emotion and all your human attributes. Repeat after me: I am Spock not Kirk. I am coldly logical and immune to human charms. A human abacus, crunching numbers with lightning speed. 

Further reading

Dr Robert Cialdini specialises in the subject of persuasion, the subtle power that people exert on each other. His book Influence summarises his research across many applied settings. Highly entertaining.  

The Hot–Cold Decision Triangle is an academic framework which blends Kahneman’s dual processing theory with Lowenstein’s notion of visceral influences (like moods and drive states). It is useful as it is applied: by embracing “colder-state reasoning” you can reach better outcomes.  

We’ve done research on temporal reframing in several categories. This paper has the academic background. “One common technique is the temporal reframing of prices, in which the marketer describes the price according to a short period, such as car insurance for “less than $1 a day,” though the charges involve a longer period, such as $360 per year.”

Implementation intentions (“If situation Y is encountered, then I will do Y) are a proven strategy to reaching goals. Read about them here.