The decoy effect is a trick that I don’t often think about as either a consumer or a marketer but it can be fairly powerful. It’s a tactic where you introduce a third product to make another product more attractive.
Dan Ariely, the behavioural economist, made this famous when he wrote about how subscription packages were prices for the Economist magazine. The short of it is that by introducing a third product, in this case just the “print subscription” offer on the left, it helped increase purchases of a comparable product (84% of purchases) vs when that third “print subscription” or decoy product was not offered (only 32% of people then purchases the same product).
As a consumer its hard to know when this trick is being played on you. I know that I’ve fallen for similar examples that you see below. Your mind seems to anchor itself on the price of that decoy product and tricks you into thinking you are making the sound decision, even though you have only ever wanted the smaller or more simple option. It’s remarkable to me how powerful this can be and is something that markets and sales professionals should probably be more aware of (not to mention consumers!)
