This Simple Framework Can Help You Sell More of Anything
Consumer choice is relative, and the way you present your offers is costing you sales if you aren’t incorporating these tips from behavioral economics
By Melina Palmer
Imagine you have been tasked with choosing a vendor for your new website. Which will you choose? Would you pick the same vendor whether it was one of two options or one of ten? Behavioral economics (the psychology of why people buy things) shows that the context of the options being presented will impact which one you think is best. Choice, as it turns out, is all relative.
Dan Ariely, a renown behavioral economist, completed a foundational study while at MIT that perfectly demonstrates how easily choices shift when an extra option is added and removed from the equation. While the test was conducted more than ten years ago, “The Economist Relativity experiment” (as it has come to be known) is still relevant.
In the experiment, an advertisement offered customers three options for consuming media:
- Digital only: $59
- Print only: $125
- Digital + Print: $125
