The Decoy Effect: The Secret to Crowd Control

by Chris Brisson on May 17, 2009

Have you read “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Areily?

It’s one of those “must read” marketing behavior books. I got a chance to whip through it over the weekend along with reading Michael Masterson’s “Ready, Fire, Aim” and came across the decoy effect.

Now, I first heard of this before from my friend Todd Brown and Rich Schefren a while back. This decoy effect is the true secret to behavior and buyer control. Something Frank Kern would call “crowd control.”

So here’s what it is…

Dan did a test with The Economist magazine on their subscriptions and here we the results…

Here’s a cool video that describes it quickly…

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5 Comments Already!

1

FatSean

May 18,2009 @ 13:50

There’s no option for “Continue to read free copies in waiting rooms and at friends’ houses.”

Seems like people are pretty stupid to so quickly forget about the dollars and the services and instead reduce their choices to one of three ‘options’.

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2

Quatsch mit Soße (22.05.09) | Qlog

May 22,2009 @ 08:48

[...] The Decoy Effect [...]

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3

The Decoy Effect: The Secret to Crowd Control

May 23,2009 @ 00:04

[...] Source [...]

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4

Scott Lovingood

Aug 19,2009 @ 18:04

The secret to why it works is framing and reference. When you are evaluating a purchase, you may have no idea what the real value is. In the case of the original offer you would lean toward the lower price option as being the one delivering more value. Once you through in the middle option you have reframed the discussion and given them a reference to compare both options too.

It also works with double dating too. Find someone who looks like you but a little worse and you become more attractive. So it’s not just numbers :)

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5

lawton chiles

Oct 09,2009 @ 01:07

Chris-fantastic stuff man. Really. Thanks for breaking it down, I think it’s becoming clearer to me, despite the fact that math is involved :)

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