Consumer rule #1: if something sounds like a good deal, it probably isn’t. Here are a couple of examples:
Some of you may have noticed a new search engine called “Bing”. It’s Microsoft’s counter to Google (B.I.N.G. = But Its Not Google). If you shop online ussing Bing, you get a 2% to 10% Cashback on any item you see with your search. A writer at Bountii.com posted about a discrepancy. If you search for an item in Bing, it inserts a cookie in your browser. So if you search for, say, a camcorder, you will see a listed price of $758 at “Store X” minus 2% = $742.84. A $15.16 savings, right? Not really.
If you either delete that cookie, or open a different browser (say, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer), and search for the same item on “Store X”.com, it will be listed at $699. Huh? Yeah, That Bing cookie just tricked you into thinking you were saving cash when they were really jipping you.
Microsoft sent in a defense, but I still think they are complete goons.
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Next up is the Amazon Kindle. Not many people I know seem to be aware of it, but I’ll let you in on a secret: You don’t actually own the books you pay for. Amazon just sells you a license to read it, that they can revoke at any moment. It’s basically renting out books. Don’t believe me? Ask the hundreds who found that Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm were deleted from their own damned Kindles. Oh, the irony.
That’s right, Amazon deleted books from people who thought they bought the book.
Remember, every time you see an advertisement, hear of a sale or an offer: they’re just saying whatever the fuck it takes for you to give them your money. They’ll make you think you need their shit so bad that your head will explode, if it means you’ll give them your money.
Nobody goes into business to give people great value.
This is based on the human minds anchoring and adjustment heuristique. (maybe not only based on this but it’s what it reminded me of)
In your first example the ancore is the listed price and we only adjust the 15,16$ that we are “saving”. The lack of adjustment makes us think that we are saving money and the lack of information makes us use the wrong anchor. We tend to use the most recent events or piece of information in our minds as anchor which often leads us to a poor decision.
Its easy to trick the human mind since we can only handle so much information at the same time. We tend to settle for lil information to make a judgment call.
There are many biais that the humain brain does most of the time without noticing. Some of these biais are really hard to correct even when you are aware of them.
… I could go on but I actually have to present this in class in 30 minutes (but in a project management context)… Therefore I’ll go revise.
Wow, who knew my last assignment would be usefull for a blog reply! Hazzah!
Posted by Val A on November 24th, 2009.