What do you think is the least noticeable method to change one’s preference?
The surprising answer is: to include another, seemingly irrelevant choice, that is especially similar to the one before.

Imagine, that to read this article further, you would have to do me a favor. You have two choices:

1. Pay with a tweet, and read 2 articles.
2. Invite 5 friends and read 5 articles.

If you want to decide rationally, you have to answer all the following questions:

• How much is transforming my twitter feed into a billboard worth?
• How much is my friends’ trust worth?

And, most importantly, how much is this article worth at all?
(Probably you don’t even have a clue, because nobody has asked you anything like this before. So you have to rely on the choices I gave you.)

But what if I showed you these options instead?

1. Pay with a tweet, and read 2 articles.
2. Invite 3 friends and read 1 article.
3. Invite 5 friends and read 5 articles.

Now you have two options you can clearly compare with each other.
In consequence, you have one choice that is definitely more attractive than the other – “Invite 5 friends and read 5 articles”. What are the chances that you’ll choose this one?

As you can see, the decoy effect is partially about the ease of comparing choices.
You can easily decide between two options that are similar to each other. But if you have to evaluate choices don’t have much in common, it will take you more time and your decision will be less accurate in general, as there is more room to make calculating errors.
You may ask yourself: “Why don’t you skip the whole painful evaluation process?”.

Therein lies the secret:

If there is a decoy, you don’t have to spend time on evaluating choices that are hard to compare, it is obvious at first sight which option is worth its price.

Even if you know exactly what you want to buy, it could be tempting to choose the (objectively) best offer instead of the one that fits your need more. I was in a similar situation before and so were you, I bet.

The the decoy effect is still dominant if you’re choosing between familiar products. At least this is what various researchers who conducted experiments on this topic found (Ariely & Wallsten, 1995; Josiam, 1995; Colman et al., 2006; Dolye et al, 1999, and so on…). By the way, the existence of this effect is so accepted, that I haven’t found any contradicting research papers. And that’s rare, believe me.

The fast food decoy

Have you ever wondered why fast food chains tend to open restaurants in cluster? They are competing against each other after all, right?
Yes, but using this strategy, they can increase their market share against traditional restaurants. Which one do you dislike the most: McDonalds or KFC?
Nevertheless, it doesn’t really matter, if they are next to each other. You have an easy choice by comparing those two ones in your head and come to the conclusion fast. But what about the traditional restaurant 20 meters away from the fast food duo? You have no idea how much it costs and what quality to expect.
In this case, probably you’ll only visit the real restaurant if you particularly dislike fast food (which is a wise thing in my opinion).

Nevertheless, this is not an artificial phenomenon. For example, you can easily spot the “decoy” option the next time you anticipate in a presidential election. If you want to read more on the political aspects, here you go!

To sum it up, the decoy effect can be implemented in every situation wherever decision making is involved.

So what if you were a web designer?
Do you want your visitors to go and check your best content? Try to link to the same page twice, under two different titles, with one that is more attractive than the other. Do some A/B testing. And don’t forget to be surprised by the results.

 

Thanks for Gabor Hannák for the input.