How to make someone buy something by addressing their (predictable) irrationality.

Let’s say you want to sell something online. Could be anything from a tangible product to a software license. Why not boost you sales by addressing the core behavior of your potential buyer? More precisely, their basic need of relative comparison.

Pretend you work at a publisher (“Fallback publishing”), and want users visiting your website to buy a subscription for a series of books about fly-fishing. You have already set up a user-friendly web shop, and now you want to present potential buyers with an interesting offer. So how can you make the (internet) user want to by this print based treasure of fly-fishing knowledge? This is where we present the decoy.

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“Fallback publishing” is presenting the ultimate guide to fly-fishing. Subscribe to this series of books and articles, and you will definitely be the one telling the stories around the campfire on you next fishing trip with the guys:

Please choose from the following subscriptions:

Web based subscription – kr  79,-  per month.

“How to succeed in fly-fishing. The one-year web based subscription includes online access to www.fangenfisk.no, containing all the articles from the books in the series, available as the books come out.”

Book subscription – kr 199,- per month.

“How to succeed in fly-fishing. Get a new book every month containing tips and inside information from the best fly-fishermen in the word.”

Book and web subscription – kr 199,- per month.

“Get a new book every month and access to all articles in the series as the books come out.”

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So what would you pick? As you are visiting on the Internet I would think you are bias to the web based subscription. And the price doesn’t seem to bad, does it? But the combo is a steal right. And who would want to buy the book subscription when you can get the web based included at the same price.

In survey made at MIT involving 100 students using a similar offer, 16 chose the Internet and 84 chose the combo. But when presenting them with the offer without the decoy (Book only) 68 of the students chose the web based subscription, and 32 chose the combo.

Example with out the decoy:

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Web based subscription – kr  79,-  per month.

“How to succeed in fly-fishing. The one-year web based subscription includes online access to www.fangenfisk.no, containing all the articles from the books in the series, available as the books come out.”

Book and web subscription – kr 199,- per month.

“Get a new book every month and access to all articles in the series as the books come out.”

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So why is this? The fact is that humans rarely chose in absolute terms. We decide the value of one thing over another by comparison. And we like easy comparisons.

We just don’t know what we want until we see it in relative context. So quite irrational. But also predictable.

Here’s a more visual (size based) example:

The point being that we perceive the value (or size in this case) relative to what we see next to it.

So why not add a decoy.

Source/inspiration: Predictably irrational by Dan Ariely