Tiebreaking
Let's try a quick little thought experiment. Imagine that one of your favorite authors is Malcolm Gladwell. You're in Borders browsing the audiobooks on CD, and you're looking to buy one of the three audiobooks by Gladwell that they have on their shelves. Here are the three choices they have in stock for you to choose from (imagine, also, that you like all of his books equally):
1. "What the Dog Saw", Unabridged, 9 Compact Discs - $26.99
2. "The Tipping Point", Unabridged, 9 Compact Discs - $26.99
3. "The Tipping Point", Abridged, 3 Compact Discs - $22.99
You'll notice that two of the options are the same book, but one is much shorter than the other, as it contains fewer discs. Given the prices and number of discs, which option would you choose?
If you're like most people, you probably were leaning towards option number two. The reason for this is simple. Because options one and two are more or less identical. That is, it's the same number of discs for the same price for one of two books you would enjoy equally. The means, when you weigh the first two options, your conclusion is effectively a tie.
However, when you compare options two and three, option two emerges as the clear winner, since you get three times as much content for less than 1/5th of additional cost.
According to behavioral economists, this matters when you go back and evaluate the first two options. Now that you see option two as being not only comprable, but also quite superior, to option three, it acts as the tiebreaker between the two options. Option three, sharing so much in common with option two and being so obviously inferior to option two, becomes the heuristic that our brains use to distinguish and choose between the first two options.
This matters if you happen to have two clear choices you want to offer people, and you want to influence them to choose one option over the other. And making such a choice easier for people makes it more likely that they'll choose one of the two options. Remember, you didn't have to buy an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell. You could have picked another author. Or you could have simply left the store without buying anything. Given a difficult choice, people will often just avoid choosing any one option if they can.
And I'll admit it: faced with this choice, I picked door #2.
1. "What the Dog Saw", Unabridged, 9 Compact Discs - $26.99
2. "The Tipping Point", Unabridged, 9 Compact Discs - $26.99
3. "The Tipping Point", Abridged, 3 Compact Discs - $22.99
You'll notice that two of the options are the same book, but one is much shorter than the other, as it contains fewer discs. Given the prices and number of discs, which option would you choose?
If you're like most people, you probably were leaning towards option number two. The reason for this is simple. Because options one and two are more or less identical. That is, it's the same number of discs for the same price for one of two books you would enjoy equally. The means, when you weigh the first two options, your conclusion is effectively a tie.
However, when you compare options two and three, option two emerges as the clear winner, since you get three times as much content for less than 1/5th of additional cost.
According to behavioral economists, this matters when you go back and evaluate the first two options. Now that you see option two as being not only comprable, but also quite superior, to option three, it acts as the tiebreaker between the two options. Option three, sharing so much in common with option two and being so obviously inferior to option two, becomes the heuristic that our brains use to distinguish and choose between the first two options.
This matters if you happen to have two clear choices you want to offer people, and you want to influence them to choose one option over the other. And making such a choice easier for people makes it more likely that they'll choose one of the two options. Remember, you didn't have to buy an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell. You could have picked another author. Or you could have simply left the store without buying anything. Given a difficult choice, people will often just avoid choosing any one option if they can.
And I'll admit it: faced with this choice, I picked door #2.