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…
May 18th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
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’.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:48 am
[...] The Decoy Effect [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 am
[...] Source [...]
August 19th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
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
October 9th, 2009 at 1:07 am
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