When faced with a small choice consumers can deploy simple strategies to make a choice and feel better about the option they choose.

Three options usually works well because customers can use extremeness aversion.  By selecting the middle option they know that they don’t have the worst that they might, but nor have they been indulgent and spent more than they might. 

The options present frame the choice; put another way, they way in which the decision is made is largely a by-product of what has been presented to the customer at the time he or she is making the choice.

We’d all like to believe that what we’re buying is the thing we would want to buy in considering our own “needs” (and indeed marketers often talk about “consumer needs” as if such a thing were tangible and real.  It isn’t.

The human (and consumer) mind reacts to its environment at an unconscious level, which triggers emotions.  Our conscious mind then constructs a “reasonable” (to itself)  justification for what it’s being told we’re feeling and from it sees us doing.

Whilst it’s a little scary to perceive oneself in this way, it’s pretty much essential to do so if you’re going to understand your customers and how to influence them.

Philip

20 Comments

  3. JC MacKenzie

    The subconscious can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is not: it will do what you tell it to do [aware or not aware].

    The thing is-you can decide what you are going to tell it. You can change your perception. That will take effort and time and I believe that’s about when the strategy begins to fail: it’s hard and mostly we don’t care for hard. Does that sound reasonable?

    Thanks

    JC jc

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  7. Rob Northrup

    Philip,

    I have noticed that often the third and most expensive choice is way, way high. Like $29, $89 and $300 choices for a tennis racquet.

    The $300 racquet is being sold to the serious players, but having it on display also probably sells a lot of $89 racquets that would be $29 sales without the high priced option. The really high proced item lets us feel like we are being wise with our money when we choose the “sensible” middle choice…

    Seize the Day,
    Rob
    Personal Asset Protection For Small Business Owners
    Have You Covered Your Assets?

    reply to comment→
  9. Christian Haller

    Tell me how this works in other buying situations. I can select from hundreds of cereals at the market – yet each brand seems to insist on having 3-10 variations. Are they doing themselves more harm than good or is this really a different situation?

    Christian

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