Avoiding losses. Loss avoidance: why people are willing to pay more so as not to miss their chance
Along with gender and race, age is a fundamental characteristic of a person by social definition. But, unlike them, the older we get, the less we like it. Old age is considered a negative characteristic in our society. Stereotypes and expectations about old age relate to the loss of physical, mental and social capabilities.
From the psychology of decision making, we know that we are extremely sensitive to losses, and we try to avoid them more than we strive to gain something (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). And empirical research shows that as we age, we normally become increasingly motivated to take actions that maintain our functionality and prevent its loss. In addition, we tend to have a positive image of ourselves, because otherwise life is very difficult. And when the world around us shouts from all sides to a person about his age, pointing out his growing limitations and inferiority every year, a person naturally tries to avoid this. And for this we have our own methods and strategies. The simplest one is comparison. A person happily compares himself with peers who look worse, and is “convinced” that he is much better and younger than his peers. This allows him to move towards a younger age group.
A recent experiment by Swiss scientists explored just such behavioral characteristics (Weiss & Freund, 2012). 78 elderly people, aged 65 to 83 years, 68% women, were divided into three groups, depending on the information they were given as independent variable. They were given a test with questions like, “The likelihood of developing dementia increases from age 60, increasing every 5 years. How many people aged 90 or over have dementia? A) one third, B) half, C) one fifth." An example is from the group receiving negative information, while in other groups they gave questions of a positive or neutral nature. The very nature of the presentation of the questions was made in such a way that the participants were not aware of such manipulation of their consciousness.
Then everyone was shown slides on a computer monitor, each with 2 photographs - one of an old person, the other of a middle-aged person. The slide was shown for 500 milliseconds, and participants were asked to look at it the same way they would look at, for example, a magazine. Information about eye movement and fixation was recorded using an i-tracker.
And here's what turned out:
- Negative information had a stronger effect on people than neutral or positive information.
- People felt negatively about their age when they were reminded of the negative consequences of aging.
- And this information was reflected in eye movements and fixations - the more a person was reminded of the negative consequences of age, the more he preferred and longer looked at younger faces.
This defensive behavior thus works like this: contrasting oneself with peers or older people in confirmation of large positive differences in oneself, and preferring the younger group in search and finding similarities with it.
Since the impact was subconscious, and eye movements are also not a particularly conscious process, we are dealing with a subconscious protective function. I think that its role is not only in creating a positive self-image, which is created by such a strategy, of course, but there must be something else, even more valuable, I hope. But what this could be, how significant it is and how to measure it is interesting and needs to be clarified.
By the way, the correct answer to the question regarding dementia is: a).
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: Analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291. doi:10.2307/1914185.
Weiss, D., & Freund, A. M. (2012). Still young at heart: Negative age-related information motivates distancing from same-aged people. . Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 173-180.
Vice President of Product Development at Lingualeo Artyom Loginov on how to use perception features to increase sales.
A good product manager should:
- First, research your audience (there are many different methods for this).
- Understand what most users need.
- Design how everything should work so that the users’ problem is solved in the most convenient and high-quality manner, without forgetting about the company’s interests (earn money, encourage them to bring their friends to the product, collect useful data from users, etc.).
All problems usually begin in the third point. Inexperienced product managers begin to rely either on their own idea of beauty, or on the opinion of their immediate environment, or ask a dozen random users. Some people begin to invent “personas.”
In my opinion, none of this works.
But if you figure out how the human brain reacts to different interface elements, why the brain “orders” us to open and view Instagram, why and at what point the brain wants to close the application, and so on, then it becomes clear how to design a good product for the selected audience .
A few years ago, an IT department was formed at Brain Science, where the guys from the Valley began to study the brain’s reaction to all sorts of things in mobile applications. Marketers were the first to get their bearings, “pulled out” ideas from there and called it neuromarketing.
Now it is everywhere, the most fashionable topic. And most product managers and designers are still slowing down, although for them there is just the most useful information. And for monetization specialists too, but they have already begun to slowly study this topic.
A special fashionable term “neuroeconomics” has appeared. It explains how our brain makes the decision to buy or not buy something in an app, what people are more willing to pay for and why.
I’ll give you an example with one of my favorite tricks - “Avoiding losses.” The human brain is designed in such a way that it rejoices at the acquisition of money or some kind of reward. But when he loses the same amount of money or misses the opportunity to receive a reward, he becomes much more upset.
Bell Cooper's book describes an interesting situation on this topic: one professor conducted an experiment on two groups of students. He suggested that the first group do additional homework. For completing them, the student received an additional point. Having earned 5 points, you don't have to take the exam. For the second group, he changed the formulation of the problem: from the very beginning, the entire group was exempt from the final exam. But those who did not solve a single additional problem during the semester homework, lost the right not to take the final exam.
In the first class, 43% of students ultimately earned 5 points and received the right not to take the exam. In the second grade there were 82% of such students. The difference is that we hate losing what we think already belongs to us. Many promotions in games work on the same principle: the user is offered a tournament or promotion, the fulfillment of the conditions of which will bring an additional prize (resources, internal currency, the opportunity to open a new hero, abilities or items).
The promotion usually has a limited validity period - from several hours to several weeks (depending on the type of game). During this period, many users increase their activity in the game due to fear of missing out. The brain tries by any means to avoid loss and finds more time for the game, sometimes even to the detriment of really important things (the brain gives the person an excuse why they don’t have to do these things, but need to spend time on the game).
Offerwalls work the same way in non-gaming applications. These are usually offers with a countdown timer that expire after some time. In its most primitive form, it's just a discount with a timer. This also works, but the project quickly falls into the discount trap, and users stop buying something at normal times, waiting for a discount to appear.
Interestingly, people take a certain amount of time to make a purchasing decision with a countdown timer. Therefore, you should not make it too short. At one conference, guys from either Bookmate or LitRes (I forgot) shared their experience of an experiment - when an offer with a countdown timer lasted for two hours, there were few purchases. As soon as the validity period was increased to several days, the number of purchases increased significantly. During tests, the team found that two hours is too short, seven days is too long, but about two days is ideal.
However, I think discounts are a bad decision. They can be replaced with a more interesting option, which still works on the same principle of avoiding losses. You can periodically “attach” small gifts to the item you want to sell. For example, if an application sells a premium account, then attaching some additional “trick” to it, which is not initially included in this account, will increase sales no worse than a discount (I checked).
Imagine that you are buying a bottle of shampoo. You see that your favorite brand has a promotion today: you can buy one bottle of shampoo with a 20% discount on the regular price. Or you can buy a bottle at full price, but in this case it comes with a free bottle of conditioner. The brain in most cases chooses the second option because it is afraid of missing out - a free gift is perceived by the brain as something more valuable than a discount, and the buyer begins to think that he has made a good deal. You won't want to miss the chance to receive a free gift, no matter the cost.
Another example of loss avoidance is trial periods. We're more likely to participate in free trials than pay up front because we tell ourselves that a free product doesn't cost us anything. The truth is that we pay with our time and effort to get used to the product. And when the trial period ends, paying for further use will be perceived by the brain as avoiding loss. We will lose all the time and effort we put into the product if we don't continue.
Another good option for avoiding losses is the “only 2 pieces left” or “last copy” statuses in online stores. In a more advanced form, monetization based on “loss avoidance” can be insurance of what the user already has.
IN real world This works great in fitness centers, where a client can “freeze” an already purchased membership so as not to lose weeks when they are on vacation. In applications, many people are willing to pay a little extra for a similar option, especially if the payment is made not with real money, but with some kind of internal currency. Such “coins” are not perceived by our brain as something significant, even if they were purchased with real money. A person will part with them much more willingly.
At a stretch, even Uber’s manipulation of the price of a trip can be attributed to loss avoidance. According to rumors, the company records the phone charge and increases the price of the trip for those whose smartphones retain 20% charge or less. It is believed that a person with a low-charging smartphone will not want to be left without a taxi and will pay for the trip even at a higher rate.
In some cases, the loss avoidance principle can be used for non-monetization functions. For example, delayed registration. If the user first plays a game or achieves something in a non-game application, the brain will perceive this as an investment of effort (cost) and will be afraid of losing it just like that. Therefore, if you ask the user to first do something in the application, and only then ask to create an account, then the fear of losing the invested effort will outweigh the “cost” of the effort to register, and in most cases will also outweigh the fear of giving out their private information to the service.
Here is the function derived by Kanneman and Tversky:
Paradoxically, people tend to overreact to small losses (or gains) but are less reactive to medium and large losses. And if the user compares commensurate gains and losses, then a loss of the same size is perceived as having greater value.
Moreover, our willingness to make a decision has nothing to do with how much we already have. Even if we have a million dollars, we will still avoid losing $20 just as much as if we had no money.
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The only thing that prevents us from reaching our limits is our own thoughts. We are our own worst enemies.
Usually the process is figuratively represented as a leisurely climb up the stairs, step by step. In fact, it consists of jumps and is more like jumping between floors on a trampoline. In my life, such leaps occur due to changes in the very way of thinking: I look back and evaluate the whole picture as a whole, I change my attitude towards something. By the way, such moments happen infrequently, they are scattered over time.
To cope with the flow of information and external stimuli that hits our brain, we unconsciously begin to think in stereotypes and use heuristic, intuitive methods for solving problems.
Writer Ash Read likened the heuristic to a bike lane for the mind, which allows it to work without having to maneuver between cars or risk getting hit. Unfortunately, most of the things that we think we take fully deliberately are actually taken unconsciously.
The big problem is that we think according to heuristic patterns when faced with an important choice. Although in this situation, on the contrary, deep thinking is necessary.
The most harmful heuristic patterns are those that prevent us from seeing the path to change. They change our perception of reality and push us to take long stairs when we need a springboard. We offer you a list of five cognitive distortions that are killing your resolve. Overcoming them is the first step towards change.
1. Confirmation bias
pressmaster/Depositphotos.comOnly in an ideal world are all our thoughts rational, logical and unbiased. In reality, most of us believe what we want to believe.
You might call it stubbornness, but psychologists have another term for this phenomenon: confirmation bias. This is the tendency to seek and interpret information in a way that confirms an idea that you hold close to your heart.
Let's give an example. In the 60s, Dr. Peter Wason conducted an experiment in which subjects were shown three numbers and asked to guess the rule known to the experimenter that explained this sequence. These numbers were 2, 4, 6, so subjects often proposed the rule “each subsequent number increases by two.” To confirm the rule, they offered their own sequences of numbers, for example 6, 8, 10 or 31, 33, 35. Everything seems to be correct?
Not really. Only one out of five subjects guessed the real rule: three numbers in ascending order of their values. Typically, Wauseon students would come up with a false idea (adding two every time) and then search only in that direction to get evidence to support their assumption.
Despite its apparent simplicity, Wason's experiment says a lot about human nature: We tend to seek only information that confirms our beliefs, not information that disproves them.
Confirmation bias affects everyone, including doctors, politicians, artists, and entrepreneurs, even when the cost of error is particularly high. Instead of asking ourselves what we are doing and why (the most important question), we often become biased and rely too much on initial judgment.
2. Anchor effect
The first solution is not always the best, but our mind clings to initial information, which literally takes over us.
The anchoring effect, or anchoring effect, is the tendency to greatly overestimate the first impression (anchor information) during decision making. This is clearly evident when estimating numerical values: the estimate is biased towards the initial approximation. Simply put, we always think relative to something rather than objectively.
Research shows that the anchoring effect can explain everything from why you don't get what you want (if you initially ask for more, the final number will be high, and vice versa) to why you believe stereotypes about people whom you see for the first time in your life.
An illustrative study by psychologists Mussweiler and Strack showed that the anchoring effect works even with initially implausible numbers. They asked participants in their experiment, divided into two groups, to answer the question of how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died. And first, each group was asked an additional question as an anchor. The first: “Did he die before he was nine years old or after?”, and the second: “Did this happen before he was 140 years old or after?” As a result, the first group assumed that Gandhi died at the age of 50, and the second - at 67 (in fact, he died at the age of 87).
The anchor question with the number 9 caused the first group to give a significantly lower number than the second group, which started from a deliberately inflated number.
It is extremely important to understand the significance of the initial information (whether it is plausible or not) before making a final decision. After all, the first information we learn about something will affect how we treat it in the future.
3. The effect of joining the majority
chaoss/Depositphotos.com The choice of the majority directly influences our thinking, even if it contradicts our personal beliefs. This effect is known as the herd instinct. You have probably heard sayings like “You don’t go to someone else’s monastery with your own rules” or “When in Rome, act like a Roman” - this is precisely the effect of annexation.
This bias can lead us to make bad decisions (for example, going to see a bad but popular movie or eating at a questionable establishment). And at worst it leads to groupthink.
Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs in a group of people within which conformity or the desire for social harmony leads to the suppression of all alternative opinions.
As a result, the group isolates itself from outside influence. Suddenly it becomes dangerous to disagree and we become our own censors. And as a result, we lose our independence of thinking.
4. Survivor Mistake
We often go to another extreme: focusing exclusively on stories of people who have achieved success. We're inspired by Michael Jordan, not Kwame Brown or Jonathan Bender. We praise Steve Jobs and forget about Gary Kildall.
The problem with this effect is that we focus on the 0.0001% of successful people, not the majority. This leads to a one-sided assessment of the situation.
For example, we may think that being an entrepreneur is easy because only successful people publish books about their businesses. But we know nothing about those who failed. This is probably why all sorts of online gurus and experts have become so popular, promising to reveal “the only path to success.” You just need to remember that the path that worked once will not necessarily lead you to the same result.
5. Loss aversion
Once we have made our choice and are on our way, other cognitive distortions come into play. Probably the worst of these is loss aversion, or the endowment effect.
The loss aversion effect was popularized by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who discovered that we would rather avoid even a small loss than focus on the benefits we might receive.
The fear of a small loss can keep a person from participating in the game, even if a fabulous win is possible. Kahneman and Tversky conducted an experiment with a very ordinary mug. People who didn't have it were willing to pay about $3.30 for it, and those who did have it were willing to part with it for only $7.
Consider how this effect might affect you if you... Are you afraid to think outside the box for fear of losing something? Does the fear outweigh what you can gain?
So, there is a problem. Where is the solution?
All cognitive distortions have one thing in common: they arise from an unwillingness to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
We prefer to work with something familiar and do not want to look for mistakes in our plans. IN positive thinking has its advantages. But if you make important decisions blindly, you're unlikely to make the best choice possible.
Before making a big decision, make sure you are not the victim of cognitive biases. To do this, take a step back and ask yourself:
- Why do you think it is necessary to do this?
- Are there any counterarguments to your opinion? Are they wealthy?
- Who influences your beliefs?
- Do you follow other people's opinions because you truly believe in them?
- What will you lose if you make this decision? What will you buy?
There are literally hundreds of different cognitive biases, and without them our brains simply could not function. But if you don’t analyze why you think this way and not otherwise, it’s easy to fall into stereotyped thinking and forget how to think for yourself.
Personal growth never comes easy. This is a difficult job that you need to dedicate yourself to. Don't let your future suffer just because not thinking is easier.
A game can be developed under the influence of various fields of science. Among them, the field of psychology is one of the most interesting, since it offers options for player interaction that may not be provided for by the main mechanics of the game. This week I'm publishing my take on loss avoidance, which I hope will develop into a series of articles on psychology.
I found one of the best discussions of the phenomenon of loss avoidance on Usabilia, where the term is described as follows:
“Loss avoidance is a human characteristic that describes how people are naturally afraid of losing something. If we compare, people experience much more grief from defeat than joy from victory. Moreover, the magnitude of the loss is greatly exaggerated compared to the benefit, even if the monetary value is the same.”
The question of the essence of the phenomenon of loss avoidance is raised infrequently. Instead, modern scientific papers on the topic tend to focus more on why it happens and what its limits are. I think some of these questions might be interesting for later articles, but for now I want to focus on the foundation of loss avoidance as it relates to game design.
It just so happens that two different game developers have successfully recreated and replicated the effect of loss avoidance in their own projects. Therefore, their games are a great example of how this psychological effect can be used to improve the gaming experience. And it just so happens that these two are some of my favorite game developers: Rainer Knizia and Stefan Feld.
Loss Avoidance Basics
Ra (1999) by Rainer Knizia is a game that always makes me think about the fear of losing victory points. The main goal of the game is to collect tiles, and these tiles will generally give you victory points when placing your civilization's monuments, pharaohs, floodplains, and technologies. Most often you get victory points, but there are two exceptions: if you have the fewest pharaohs, you lose 2 points, and if you have no civilization technologies at the end of the era, you lose 5 points.
An example of a very well designed auction game, tile prices are determined based on demand. However, in most or all of the Ra games I've played, civilization tiles tend to be overvalued: people will pay more for them than it's worth to get 5 points, and understandably so, because they're afraid of losing victory points . I suspect that in Ra - Dice Game (2009) the importance of civilization technologies implemented through dice is also overestimated, but it is difficult to understand exactly how much, because in Ra everything is calculated a little differently. (This is likely another topic for future conversation.)
Pharaohs, for whom you can get a penalty of 2 points, are even more interesting than the technologies of civilization. I'm sure the average player overestimates their importance in the same way, even if he is not the last in the number of these tiles. However, loss avoidance tends to fade with experience in the game. The same trend can be seen in many other games.
Let's talk about Shannon's first law of loss-avoiding game design:
More experienced players take losses more easily.
The era of crisis
At the end of the 00s, games with crisis elements appeared on the market. The most famous in this category is Agricola (2007), but I believe that Stefan Feld is the unrivaled master of this genre.
The main idea behind this type of game is that penalties and losses are put at the forefront, making them a constant factor in the gameplay. Thanks to the phenomenon of loss avoidance, the tension in such games increases, and this in itself stimulates making certain decisions, which is not always for the better.
Notre Dame(2007) was Feld's first game in this category. The game has many options, including card drafting and resource management, but there is also an element of crisis: each round, each player adds a certain number of rats to their plague track, and the only way to reduce their number is by building hospitals.
The interesting thing about Notre Dame is that new players often try their best to prevent the plague track from increasing, even though it has no effect until it reaches the last value. Experienced players (again) are a little more relaxed about increasing the value on their plague track, but even they are not inclined to play as efficiently as possible, without considering the fact that they would end up practically at the end of this track by the end of the game. This is because, again, they are afraid of random losses, which is possible if the cards fall out unsuccessfully at the end of the turn.
Players try to avoid not only losses as such, but also increasing the likelihood of future losses.
In the Year of the Dragon (2007) by Stefan Feld may be the nastiest, crisis-laden game of them all. Every round something terrible happens: an epidemic kills people if there are not enough healers; the Mongols kill people if there are not enough warriors; the emperor takes people if taxes are not paid; drought kills people if the palaces are not supplied with rice. It's a constant streak of misfortune that players fight to keep up, and surprisingly, it doesn't end their fear of loss. (Although this may exhaust players' patience!)
And among all this disgrace, the “Dragon Festival” suddenly begins. This is a good event that can give a lot of victory points to players who provide fireworks tiles, but this is always less of a concern for players than the remaining time left in the game.
Even in a game oversaturated with fines, players, as a rule, are more worried about possible losses than about bonuses that are barely noticeable against the backdrop of the general crisis.
Costs and Consequences
Rainer Knizia focused entirely on the phenomenon of loss avoidance, I think, in the 90s, and now let's look at another game from that era, Medici (1995), as an example of another interesting use of loss avoidance.
In Medici, players place monetary bets to purchase large quantities of goods, which in turn can earn them money, although the resulting profit is not always obvious. The catch is that the money you spend is your victory points.
The game assumes that spending VP will cause some loss avoidance effect, although probably not on the same scale as losing VP in other game mechanics (like rats or missing civilization tiles). However, new players seem to be more reluctant to spend their VP than more experienced players.
Spending can sometimes lead to loss avoidance, although to a lesser extent than actually losing something.
Interestingly, Medici offers a good argument against wasting software. You start with 30-40 florins, and if you get to 0... Then you won't have more money to participate in the auction. So there are real consequences to overspending.
Sometimes a game can offer a compelling argument that will help you avoid losses.
Conclusion
Clearly, the topic of loss avoidance in games could use some real-world research to better assess how applicable this phenomenon is, and exactly what type of behavior it generates, to what extent, and for what type of players. I also think it would be interesting to mathematically analyze how certain mechanics affect the difference between loss and gain. For now, however, I think it's fair to summarize that designing with loss aversion in mind can work well in a game, presenting players with dilemmas that have solutions outside of the game itself, into core issues of human psychology.
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Can be used to increase sales growth psychological techniques, helping to create the illusion of choice, distorting reality. Emotions play an important role. They justify techniques aimed at playing with a person’s subconscious. They occur often in life and are no longer perceived as programming for certain actions.
Let's look at marketing tricks that have a positive effect on customers and bring benefits to business growth.
Loss Avoidance Effect
Losses for people have always caused negative emotions, their power is so great that compared to acquiring something, people are more worried about losing it. The joy of an acquisition is not so strong, especially if an item was purchased out of necessity (a hat in windy weather in a random store). Emotions may be absent altogether.
But no one likes to lose anything. If an opportunity arose to win 500 rubles and a person did not win, he will be upset, but not so much if he completely loses the 500 rubles that were in his hands.
You won money - take it immediately!
Therefore, they came up with a rule based on the emotions of losing benefits.
H A person experiences the same emotions when losing a sum of money as when receiving a double win. When we lose something, we get angry with more force than we are happy about acquiring something.
When working with a customer base and implementing e-mail marketing into your work, you need to pay attention to the effect of losses. Write to clients what benefits they will miss, what they will not receive if they do not use this product. It is important to speak the client’s language, but sometimes to play a game with his subconscious, pushing him to take action for fear of losing or missing out on something important.
Seopult offers to try their automated advertising system, which includes: search engine promotion, contextual advertising, content marketing free of charge for a certain period.
The company regularly conducts free webinars, seminars and CyberMarketing conferences at the Mail.Ru Group office in Moscow.
On November 11, 2017 there will be a large conference that will attract a lot of people.
Content Marketing Conference CyberMarketing17 Cost of participation: 
Having become acquainted with the company's products for free, there is a possibility that a person will want to continue using the system, but on a paid basis. This is the effect of loss avoidance in action.
The well-known company Adobe also offers to use its products free of charge for 1 month. Some free versions of programs have limited functionality, they offer to buy full version with expanding capabilities.
Adobe products The company offers clients 4 tariff plans. To try out the service in action, a free tariff has been developed with no access to applications, limited functionality, and no ability to select and cluster queries.
Megaindex company and its products Sometimes a free product is no different from a paid one, you are only allowed to use it limited access. Even programs that are downloaded have a trial period and after that the program does not work.
Let's remember about antivirus applications.
I use Avast in the paid version and buy new keys every year. Avast also exists in the Free version. Additional features that constantly appear in the company are available in other paid licenses.
Avast Antivirus with additional features The online service also offers clients a free trial of the program's capabilities. And in 2016, the company gave 100 rubles or more to the account to try out all the paid functionality in action.
With this amount, you can open a project, create several text tasks, and involve copywriters in the work, giving them guest access.
The company also gave the right to update the budget three times for 100 rubles.
Social effect
The social effect is fully manifested when a person chooses a product based on fashion or necessity. Even if the brain sends signals to something that it does not like, in reality this may not be the case. People are deceived in their tastes based on unpleasant situations with some branded products. The brain remembers this, but it will still like the product.
I wonder what contributes to the creation emotional connections with branded goods and services.
- Hostages are people who cannot refuse to buy some product, for example, gasoline or toilet paper. As long as they are hostage to the product, they will not focus on manufacturers and choose who is better.
- Fans - when a buyer decides to buy a product that is not very important to him and is not a primary necessity, for example, iPhone 10. He made a choice in its favor and decided to spend money on it.
Hostages of programs for uniqueness, for checking the nausea of texts, for checking for (Glavred). If these programs ever become paid, then some will have a desire not to abandon them.
Popular online service om is text.ru. You need to pay for batch checking of texts in the program.
Text uniqueness checker A popular service for optimizers will be Topvisor, which helps track a site’s position in search. This online service has long become a social necessity for optimizers, Internet marketers and web analysts.
Popular resource Topvisor
A striking example of a technique is comparing numbers with each other (in this case, prices), where one of the prices will act as an anchor for the rest.
Let's talk about a social experiment and how the anchor effect manifests itself.
For example, let’s gather a group of people (about a hundred people) and ask them to answer 2 questions:
- What are the last three digits in your phone number?
- How many crackers are in one package?
At first glance, two different and unrelated questions. After such an experiment, you can notice the connection. People who had large numbers in their phone number significantly exaggerated the number of crackers in the pack. The numbers of the number served as an anchor for them.
Another successful example is the experiment of Amos Tversk and Daniel Kahneman. An object that looked like a roulette wheel was placed in front of the people who participated in the experiment. The experiment involved two groups of people. The roulette starts. For some it stops at 75, and for others at 15. They are asked to answer two questions (the values are different for each group):
- Are less or more than 15 (75) percent of African countries members of the United Nations?
- What do you think this percentage is?
The first group answered 45 percent, and the second - 25. Each of them had its own starting point, an anchor effect.
If you are deciding on the price, you should never specify a minimum amount; it is better to exaggerate.
How does this work in an online store? With the help of this technique, some of the logic of sorting goods is challenged.
Let's figure out how?
For example, we find an online store that deals in electronic equipment. We find and go to the laptop section. The first five prices for a product, for example, are: 21,400 rubles, 19,000 rubles, 21,400 rubles, 21,400 rubles and 21,400 rubles. In this price range, the buyer will naturally be attracted to a laptop for 19,000 rubles, since for the buyer the price of 21,400 will not seem profitable.
But if the price range is: 23,000 rubles, 19,400 rubles, 21,400 rubles and 19,400 rubles, then the price of a laptop for 21,500 will no longer look overpriced.
This technique is used by almost all Internet sites. To improve the effect, they can add additional bonuses.
Thus, they increase their average bill.
The price should always be slightly increased The anchoring effect is also used in cross-selling (they use an existing relationship with a client in order to sell him an additional product or service).
Distorting perception of choice
The principle of operation of the technique is the frivolous choice of buyers. We don’t always make a deliberate choice, and we can play on this.
For example, a buyer made a bad choice and bought some products, at that time he thought it was right. In the future he will come to you again, it will become a kind of habit.” I bought it once, I’ll buy it again.” Agree, it’s not bad when a buyer has a habit of buying your products.
Much has been done scientific experiments to confirm this effect. A striking example was the choice of a used car. All participants in the experiment received complete information (features and options) about two different car models and were given time to think and choose one of them.
After some time, the participants were brought together again and reminded which car they had chosen. They were again given information, but only different information. The experimenters changed the positive and negative aspects of the machines and again offered to choose one of the options. 98% of participants made the same choice as the first time.
For example, we buy a laptop. We have a large number of models in front of us. Having assessed all the positive and negative aspects, we settle on a specific model. Having bought it, we will immediately begin to reconsider our choice and convince ourselves that the chosen model is better than the rest.
Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will always claim that his choice is correct and defend it if it was wrong.
There are many different tricks that work with our subconscious. And all of them can be used every day to promote your business. You can also read the article about 
