Before we proceed to the analysis of heuristics which define a choice of social goods, first of all we should provide proofs in favour of the judgement in the title as proved one – people buy social things. Do they really buy? Do the goods of social value are "modal alternatives", i.e. a choice option which has advantages compared to others?

Hereinafter I will refer to data of the research we conducted several years ago by the order of Our Future Foundation for regional and social programmes. As Diagrams 1 and 2 show, the respondents are ready to change even the brand they prefer to buy «regularly» (this particular situation – regular purchasing is the most difficult to be changed) for the products of social entrepreneurs. Although, if we review the social desirability of this answer as a correction factor (though, in our case – anonimous online survey – the conditions minimally contributed to its occurrence), we get fairly significant ratio. Partially, the factor of "external validity", i.e. that confirms accuracy of our hypothesis, is active usage of «social» as the strategy of promotion of «regular» goods. The social marketing today represents a well-established and actively developing line of marketing, and at advertising festivals now it is difficult to distinguish the commercial advertising from the social one – humanistic values become the dominant and actively operated values both by charitable Foundations and large corporations (and it is perfect, particularly in case when these campaigns have a great effect not only commercial, but also a social one).

Are you ready to change the brand you regularly buy for the products of social entrepreneurs (made by socially vulnerable groups of citizens) with similar properties in terms of quality, etc.?

Diagram 1. Readiness to change a traditional brand for the products of social entrepreneurs, %

If you find out that goods or service are made by a socially vulnerable group of citizens (physically impaired persons, large families, etc.), how will it impact your choice of products?

Diagram 2. Impact of the factor of «social» goods on making a consumer decision, %

We will try to figure out reasons, why a choice of «social» goods is yet attractive for a consumer, from the point of view of the psychological theory of decisions.

Let’s start from the point that the situation of choice itself intrinsically and subjectively is a task that is not always a pleasant one. We say "burden of choice" in a situation when we have to make an important decision. Although, a pleasant for us choice – a choice of a new dress, for instance – induces tension (what if the dress I buy not the best one and later I will find a cheaper and better one?), let alone a choice of a new flat, profession, and on top of that, a life partner. All these situations require costs of our mental resources and besides go along with a fear to make a wrong choice.

Fortunately, the human mind has a great resource of defense and one of the principle of its functioning is "saving mental energy". At every particular moment, a person is exposed to a wide variety of stimulus, a part of which we even do not aware of (e.g. clothes we are in, noise of the air conditioner or outside the window – stimulus that we will not aware of until they, for one reason or another, turn out to be in the field of our voluntary or involuntary (e.g. as a result of loud sound outside the window). One of the manifestations of this saving principle besides is a series of phenomena at the level of decision making. Thus, to reduce a "subjective discomfort" that arises in a situation when we need to make a choice from several alternatives, we use a principle of the alternative ranking, which allows us to distinguish generalized clusters of choice options, while the larger the alternative set is, the more important role this principle plays. Or another principle – heuristics of "complexity reduction" of alternatives: a subject makes a choice on the basis of considerably less number of alternatives, than those he or she can distinguish. Indeed, if we imagine a number of choice options we can make (e.g. there are as many as several millions of potential life partners, if we assume gender, age and marital status; it is hard to imagine if we wanted to make a choice on the basis of meeting all the potential partners…), it becomes obvious that we make a choice on the basis of far from all possible options. Moreover, Yu. Kozeletsky in his studies proved that people in the situation of decision making take into account 3 to 6 hypotheses at the same time when making a choice, and they assume these hypotheses as mostly credible and ignore the others. Almost magical "7+/-2" – the formula that describes many psychological phenomena (e.g. capacity of our recent memory, attention). The same data were obtained in studies of other scientists.