Designing choice matters: triple your sales by adding one more choice

Dan Ariely is a professor and a fabulous writer about behavioral economics. Multiple times he has written about an MIT study that demonstrates the psychology of the architecture of choice.

I will tell the story in reverse. When selling the famous Economist they set up some experiments.

When selling a web version only for $59 and a web & print version for $125, 68% of the people bought the web version.

By adding a print only version for $125 also they were able to flip the purchases entirely to the web & print version … 84% of the people bought it.

That is almost a three fold increase in exactly the same offering “web & print for $125” just because they added another choice. That choice allows a mental comparison that increased the perceived value three fold.

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