The Anchoring Effect
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 6:16 am
Anchoring doesn't only happen when it's a new product and we don't calculate the price, we are also impacted in this practice by the first price we see , the one suggested by the manufacturer or the one we paid in the past.
Still not convinced? I'll give you two more examples — First, if you're in the SAAS market or have ever hired a SAAS company (hiring software as a service), you've probably seen a table like this:
Good practice says: give a maximum of 3 options, the middle one should be gambling email list "the most chosen" or "the most recommended", it is slightly more expensive and has more tools than the lowest priced one, in addition.
Another example is the "infoproducts" market, which sells following the "launch formula " guide, those courses that people launch from time to time, which you need to buy because the offer ends quickly and it has a MEGA DISCOUNT:
Have you seen the effect of anchoring being applied in different segments? Interesting, isn't it?! But I'll go a little further: sometimes we are impacted by numbers that don't make any sense with the question. I'll borrow a study presented in the book "The Psychology of Money" by Dan Ariely.
The researchers presented a group of MIT students with a list of products (keyboard, mouse, chocolates, wine), the idea was to ask how much these students were willing to pay for each of the items.
But, before asking this, they asked them to write down the last 2 digits of their CPFs.
And what happened?
Systematically, the price that students were willing to pay for products was associated with the last two digits of each student's CPF; the higher the two digits, the higher the prices the student was willing to pay.
The fact is that the less we know about the product, and the easier it is to buy it, the greater the tendency to be exposed to the anchoring effect.
Still not convinced? I'll give you two more examples — First, if you're in the SAAS market or have ever hired a SAAS company (hiring software as a service), you've probably seen a table like this:
Good practice says: give a maximum of 3 options, the middle one should be gambling email list "the most chosen" or "the most recommended", it is slightly more expensive and has more tools than the lowest priced one, in addition.
Another example is the "infoproducts" market, which sells following the "launch formula " guide, those courses that people launch from time to time, which you need to buy because the offer ends quickly and it has a MEGA DISCOUNT:
Have you seen the effect of anchoring being applied in different segments? Interesting, isn't it?! But I'll go a little further: sometimes we are impacted by numbers that don't make any sense with the question. I'll borrow a study presented in the book "The Psychology of Money" by Dan Ariely.
The researchers presented a group of MIT students with a list of products (keyboard, mouse, chocolates, wine), the idea was to ask how much these students were willing to pay for each of the items.
But, before asking this, they asked them to write down the last 2 digits of their CPFs.
And what happened?
Systematically, the price that students were willing to pay for products was associated with the last two digits of each student's CPF; the higher the two digits, the higher the prices the student was willing to pay.
The fact is that the less we know about the product, and the easier it is to buy it, the greater the tendency to be exposed to the anchoring effect.