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Let’s say you are in a cafe and you want to buy a coffee. There are three options: small, medium and large glass size. The medium size costs almost as much as the large one. An obvious opportunity arises before your eyes.
Have you ever made the most expensive decision with the largest glass, even if you don’t intend to drink that much coffee?
If so, you are not the only one who has been bitten by a marketing tactic, and an interesting aspect of it. psychology – whereby the deliberate presentation of a less attractive option – in this case the cup of coffee in the middle – pushes you to pay more money than you would have initially chosen.
“If you put the options in a specific context, you can drive people to more expensive products” explains Linda Chang, a psychologist at Harvard University, to the BBC.
This trick, the so-called “decoy effect,” was first explored as a possible marketing strategy to influence consumer behaviors like that of the cafeteria. However, recent research suggests that it may have an impact on other sectors, including politics. It shows the ease with which our crisis “plays” depending on the context in which the events are presented.
By knowing how this “trick” works, you are less likely to be swayed by this unconscious influence, but you can also discover ways to use it as a persuasion tool.
The hack was first recorded in the 1980s, according to the BBC, and it works as follows:
Suppose one has to choose a flight from the following:
- Flight A costs $ 400 with a 60 minute stopover
- Flight B costs $ 330 with a layover of 150 minutes
- Flight C costs $ 435 with a 60 minute stopover
The researchers found that most would choose flight A, which is cheaper than flight C and more expensive than flight B, but with less layover wait.
Here’s a different set of flights:
- Flight A that costs $ 400 with a stopover of 60 minutes
- Flight B costs $ 330 with a stopover of 150 minutes
- Flight C costs $ 330 with a stopover of 195 minutes
In this scenario, the most common option is flight B.
Logically, this change in attitude does not make sense. Flight B should not be more attractive now than in the first example, as both the waiting time and the price are exactly the same. However, the change in flight C, which has a longer wait time, changes the way stakeholders consider the other possibilities. And now they prefer to wait that long (50 minutes in both examples) for a lower price.
In each example, Flight C – the “thief” – was designed to look similar but less attractive than one of the other options, the target option. And it is precisely this comparison that reinforces how desirable the target flight is. Experiments studying options like these have found that the use of a well-designed “barker”, as in the example, can change the decision between the other two options by up to 40%, showing how easily they can be changed. our decisions. depending on the context in which we are called to decide.
As the first example shows, such a “thief” can make the consumer pay more money, hence the interest of his industry. marketing.
In psychologist circles, the discussion about the exact reasons for this behavior is still ongoing. One idea, however, is that the comparison with the “barker” option provides a foundation for an apparently arbitrary choice. If you only compare flights A and B, it’s hard to estimate the wait time – how much money is an extra 90 minute wait really? But when an option is clearly better than the “thief” option – flight C – then there is an explanation to substantiate one’s preference.
These behavior patterns have been observed in many different types of products, from beers to televisions and from cars to homes. The unattractive third option changes the way people choose between the other two.
In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely describes how The Economist uses that set of options to encourage its readers to choose the most expensive subscription package. A subscription to the digital edition of the magazine costs only $ 59, a subscription to the print edition $ 125 and the third option, which combines both editions, also costs $ 125.
The second option, the print-only subscription option, is obviously the “thief” as it offers less than the third package at the same price. But Ariely found that its mere presence as an option increases the choice of version mix relative to subscribing only to the digital version. When only the first two options were presented, readers were 52% more likely to choose the cheapest online reading of the magazine, compared to presenting all three probabilities. In other words, he is the “thief” who made the difference.
This behavior pattern also applies to extreme goods and luxury goods, since the behavior pattern seems to move on the same axes. A recent publication from the University of British Columbia documented the effect of the “thief” trick on the market. diamonds! It turned out that the presence of slightly inferior but equally accurate products contributed more than 20% to merchants’ profits.
But not everyone is equally prone to such choices. As noted in other studies on cognitive behavior, researchers have found that the way you think plays a role. Questionnaires, for example, can record whether some people “listen” more to your instinct and emotion, or whether they are more detailed and prefer more reasoned reasoning. According to the research results, those who take more account of their instincts are more likely to be “seduced” by this trick.
An interesting fact is that in this process it can also play a role hormonesHigher levels of testosterone, for example, tend to make people more impulsive, meaning they are more “vulnerable” to such tricks. This trick also has a bigger “pass” when it comes to making a group decision.
Scientists have also explored this “trick” in different contexts, regardless of consumer behavior. Ariely, for example, found that she could even appear on dates. Based on her research, we are more likely to like someone if there is a “barker” next to her, who looks like the first one but is slightly less attractive. This is worth keeping in mind when searching for profiles on Tinder, for example. The perception of how attractive someone is depends on who you saw before or after that person.
In the same way, it seems to affect the way we vote (although some elements of our electoral behavior will always seem inexplicable, no matter how hard it is investigated …) but also the way companies select their personnel. In these cases, the “barker” may appear by chance and not be deliberately placed among the options. However, if the interested party examines two candidates with great similarities, but one is slightly superior to the other, this will put him in the eyes of the one who chooses compared to other candidates.
Chang, who has been researching how this “third option” works in the hiring process, wonders if this could be a specific factor as algorithms begin to scan candidates and present options to those who have a choice. . “You can present options, barkers, and thus bring the person closer to some options,” he says. Not only people who choose staff can be influenced: recent experiments have shown that in the same way that a person can be influenced employee assesses the benefits of potential workplaces.
On a more positive note, British scientists have started to consider whether this trick can be used to encourage people to make decisions that are more beneficial to their health.
Christian Von Wagner, a health and behavioral science researcher at University College London, for example, studied people’s intention to undergo an important, but unpleasant, test for colorectal cancer. It found that if stakeholders had to choose between making an appointment for the exam or not, most chose to ignore it. But if they had a third option, an appointment at a less convenient hospital with a longer wait (here’s the “thief”, then more people would skip the first option.
As seen in the other examples, this has nothing to do with people choosing the “barker”. His mere presence made the first choice less “difficult.”
Von Wagner also offered women the option of being examined by a doctor of the same or opposite sex, the thief again, and found that his presence increased their intention to undergo the examination. In this case, this trick can save lives.
With all of the above in mind, you can be a little more careful in your decisions, whether it’s the headphones you buy to listen to music or the insurance coverage package you choose. You wonder if you are really making a decision that you need or want, with the features you were originally looking for, or if you were distracted by a less attractive option that came into play. And to be able to observe as a third party how much clearer things are afterwards.
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