Interesting Psychological Quirk

A new study has come up with another quirky characteristic of human behavior, and you can expect marketers to be testing it out on you soon. It seems people are willing to pay more if just before the purchase process they were viewing relative prices from the perspective of more expensive items.

In the experiment, people were asked to rank hotel prices in three cities. I’m assuming they were given a list of prices for each city. One group was told to rank them in most-expensive to least-expensive order, while another group were told to put them in the opposite order. Then both groups were asked how much they would be willing to pay for a hotel room. The group ranking cities from most-expensive to least were willing to pay significantly more, on average, than those whose thought-patterns were primed in the opposite direction, looking for the least expensive first.

So the next time a marketer asks you to review comparison prices before making your buying decision, see if they are trying to manipulate your expectations and behavior by suggesting you look at the most expensive first.

This is another subtle trick that can be cloaked as being friendly and helpful (Would you like fries with that?) but is basically pure manipulation.

Favorite Quotes #1

I’ve just read my new favorite phrase, which I will quote here:

They fail out of fear of failing.

That is from Andrew J Morris’ blog Web Empire, in a post on The Root Cause [of failure]. He maintains that fear of failure is the main cause of failing to make money online. More usefully, he also offers solutions to that problem.

Morris suggests that by having lots of websites, and a basic criteria to distinguish between success and failure, you are ensured of ultimate success. With multiple projects, if one fails you simply drop it. That leaves you with only successes, and the learning experience of failed efforts. Makes sense to me. Think I’ll add that site to the blogroll here.