Why do stores sometimes pay people to be fake shoppers?

When desperate storeowners want to convince passersby to stop in, they hire fun, happy people to pose as shoppers. They’re actually out-of-work actors, retirees, and me.

See Confessions of a Professional Fake Shopper by Sam Dunnington.

In economics, signaling theory says that we send out signals to convince people we have certain traits. For example, a college degree is a signal to employers that you might be smarter and more hard working than the average person.

But sometimes people try to fake the signal (at the bottom I have links to many other posts I have done on this. There is alot of faking out there).

Excerpts from the Dunnington article (the whole article is interesting):

"John spread his arms like a tent revivalist and addressed the 50 of us standing in the subterranean concourse of Philadelphia’s Jefferson Station. John, the hiring manager for the temp agency, was a tall man with a big belly, a nice smile, and 10 drops of sweat perpetually shining on his pate. “Good afternoon,” John said. John had zeal. “We are today creating an atmosphere of fun, and crowds, and happy shoppers.” John explained that street construction had decimated walk-up traffic to a department store down the street. A client had hired the temp agency to turn that around: People would peer through the scaffolding and jackhammer dust, see a Fun Crowd of Happy Shoppers inside the store, and thus be compelled to join in. John looked around at us in the dank gloaming of the train station and beamed."

 "“No one should think for a second that you are not a real shopper,” John said through his smile. That was why we were meeting in the train station. “Imagine you are on a break from work, maybe for lunch, just out to do a bit of shopping.” When he said this, he made a little rectangle with his hands, like a director coaching an ensemble cast. “We will not reimburse you for purchases,” John said, “but if you want to buy a hot dog? Sit down and eat it right outside the store? Knock yourself out.” Two of the waistcoats next to me nodded to one another, as if we’d been negotiating, and the opportunity to eat hot dogs on the clock sealed the deal. John warned us we would be supervised, even if we didn’t see them coming, and dispatched us to the store."

Related posts:

A fake job reference can be just a few clicks away.

Fake Economist Fools Portugal.

Slave Redemption in Sudan. (Fake slaves are sold to those who buy slaves and then give them their freedom)

Can A Product Work Just Because It's Expensive?. (fake medicine)

If It Pays To Have Friends, Can You Pay To Have Friends?. (you can hire fake boyfriends)

Study: Half of American Doctors Give Patients Placebos Without Telling Them.

Saudis grapple with fake street sweepers .

Rent a White Guy: Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing (by Mitch Moxley in The Atlantic Monthly)

Can adding a phantom third story to their homes help families find a wife for their son?

Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling

Mexicans buy fake cellphones to hand over in muggings
 
Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!)

How does a company selling used luxury goods spot fakes? (signalling and conspicuous consumption).

Why Fiction Trumps Truth

We humans know more truths than any species on earth. Yet we also believe the most falsehoods

By Yuval Noah Harari. Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and the author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.”

"When it comes to uniting people around a common story, fiction actually enjoys three inherent advantages over the truth. First, whereas the truth is universal, fictions tend to be local. Consequently if we want to distinguish our tribe from foreigners, a fictional story will serve as a far better identity marker than a true story. Suppose we teach our tribal members to believe that “the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” That makes for a very poor tribal myth. For if I encounter somebody in the jungle and that person tells me that the sun rises in the east, it might indicate that she is a loyal member of our tribe, but it might just as well indicate that she is an intelligent foreigner who reached the same conclusion independently of our tribe. It is therefore better to teach tribe members that “the sun is the eye of a giant frog that each day leaps across the sky,” since few foreigners — however intelligent — are likely to hit upon this particular idea independently.

The second huge advantage of fiction over truth has to do with the handicap principle, which says that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler. Otherwise, they can easily be faked by cheaters. For example, male peacocks signal their fitness to female peahens by sporting an enormous colorful tail. This is a reliable signal of fitness, because the tail is heavy, cumbersome and attracts predators. Only a truly fit peacock can survive despite this handicap. Something similar happens with stories. 

If political loyalty is signaled by believing a true story, anyone can fake it. But believing ridiculous and outlandish stories exacts greater cost, and is therefore a better signal of loyalty. If you believe your leader only when he or she tells the truth, what does that prove? In contrast, if you believe your leader even when he or she builds castles in the air, that’s loyalty! Shrewd leaders might sometimes deliberately say nonsensical things as a way to distinguish reliable devotees from fair-weather supporters.

Third, and most important, the truth is often painful and disturbing. Hence if you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you. An American presidential candidate who tells the American public the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about American history has a 100 percent guarantee of losing the elections. The same goes for candidates in all other countries. How many Israelis, Italians or Indians can stomach the unblemished truth about their nations? An uncompromising adherence to the truth is an admirable spiritual practice, but it is not a winning political strategy.

Some might argue that the long-term costs of believing fictional stories outweigh any short-term advantages in social cohesion. Once people get in the habit of believing absurd fictions and convenient falsehoods, this habit would spill into more and more areas, and they would consequently make bad economic decisions, adopt counterproductive military strategies and fail to develop effective technologies. While this occasionally happens, it is far from being a universal rule. Even the most extreme zealots and fanatics can often compartmentalize their irrationality so that they believe nonsense in some fields, while being eminently rational in others."