Beware The Return Trip Effect

Did you drive 20 minutes or more to get to a Super Bowl party on Sunday? Did it seem to take much longer to get there than it did coming back -- despite covering the exact same distance over the exact same roads?

Dubbed The Return Trip Effect, psychologists have studied this phenomenon and can confirm that it actually exists. There are varying theories, however, to explain it.

One is that the expectation or apprehension around what awaits upon arrival creates more sensitivity to the passage of time than when returning, and the destination experience has been completed.

For marketers who count on their customers to travel to them – such as retailers, restaurants and movies – it may be worth keeping this in mind. After all, if your customers feel like it’ll take a longer time to get where they’re going, they may not go at all. Which means, it can help to up the ante on the enticement and dramatizing the return on effort.

By the way, for us long-suffering NY Jets fans, seeing the Patriots win yet again was the Return Trip Effect in reverse. Having to watch them prevail seemed to come on really fast, while the sense of how long it’ll be to return to a championship game feels virtually interminable.