How Booking.com manipulates users • Hacker News Board

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#91

Post by bkohlmann » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:03 AM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #67

bkohlmann wrote: post #32

One of the most useful business school classes I took was entitled "Consumer Behavior" which was a deep dive into behavioral psychology and all the techniques used by marketers / websites to grab our attention. Booking.com rather overtly hits on all the techniques we discussed in detail. I used to think these techniques were "dirty." But humanity evolved to be responsive to this type of manipulation. It seems the web…

Can you suggest any good books on this? (or perhaps just the textbook your class used?)

For sure! Our "textbook" was "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. Here's a number of others:

-"Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Khaneman -"The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis -"Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb -"Pre-suasion" by Cialdini -"The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright -"The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks -"Everybody Lies" by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz -"How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams -The "Freakonomics" Trilogy

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#92

Post by sturgill » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:05 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #84

sturgill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Frankly, I don’t think I am going to stop using Booking.com. I am not aware of any other service with a comparable number of properties and reviews." It's hard to quantify negative impact of future dealings, but it's even harder to say Booking.com should change their methods when the people aware enough to be annoyed continue to give them money. It's like complaining about Google following you around the web and usi…

>"It's hard to quantify negative impact of future dealings, but it's even harder to say Booking.com should change their methods when the people aware enough to be annoyed continue to give them money" Please tell me how to avoid the duopoly that is Booking.com(Priceline Group) and Expedia in Europe? Especially so when making new booking on short notice. Booking.com has maintained close to 60% market share: http://www.…

I don't actually travel much, and have never used Booking.com. So no dog in this fight. But your question is pretty much my point: if people aren't going to use some other service, it's a lot harder to quantify long-term negative impacts of dark patterns vs the measurable short-term lift.

[Edit] There's only so much conversation to be had around a point like "we don't want to become MySpace." If what they are doing generates more revenue, and if people don't get so annoyed that they'll use another service, and if they avoid lawsuits and regulators...

You'll never hear this pitch in an executive meeting: "I have an idea that will reduce revenue X% with no quantifiable long-term benefits."

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#93

Post by bkohlmann » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:06 AM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #34

bkohlmann wrote: post #32

One of the most useful business school classes I took was entitled "Consumer Behavior" which was a deep dive into behavioral psychology and all the techniques used by marketers / websites to grab our attention. Booking.com rather overtly hits on all the techniques we discussed in detail. I used to think these techniques were "dirty." But humanity evolved to be responsive to this type of manipulation. It seems the web…

Not sure I understand your logic. Are you saying that these tactics aren't "dirty" because as human beings we are very susceptible to them? One would argue they are unethical precisely because of this. Or do you mean it's ok because everyone else does it?

As someone who stove to be "rational" in everything I did, and dismissed the power of emotions in human decision making, coming face to face with the effectiveness of persuasion made me realize that winning friends and influencing people was about speaking a language that resonated with actual humans. The way people behave and respond has been studied for generations - and the best salespeople in all realms either intuitively or deliberately have discovered what makes people lean one way or another. It's a huge mistake to dismiss the biases that define us, but rather we should embrace and understand their impact.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#94

Post by wyck » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:11 AM UTC

The downsides of A/B testing. Unless of course you have confidence in your brand and decision making to not always trust users and the short term bottom line.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#95

Post by rgrieselhuber » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:12 AM UTC

This post has some decent points about reviews and the fine print, but the rest comes off as a bit precious.

I travel a lot and have used Booking.com to save myself quite a bit of money over the years. I still regularly compare their prices with other sites and they are pretty consistently cheaper than competing sites.

The "hurry" parts of their site do induce a little anxiety but I tend to also appreciate the real time information so I know I get the room I want.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#96

Post by jdietrich » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

zavulon wrote: post #80

hervature wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people not Google for alternatives? I can think of at least 5 competitors to Ticket Master. There's even one that only charges 5% seller fee and no buyer fee.

For most events (at least in the US), you can only get tickets via TicketMaster. Venues sign an agreement with TM that forbids them selling tickets elsewhere. TM controls venue's entire ticket sale workflow, including inventory, printing and sending tickets, etc. Going with another vendor is a gigantic undertaking, you would need to overhaul most of your processes. Most venues don't have the resources/bandwidth to pu…

Ticketmaster pay a substantial share of their "service fee" to venues and promoters. By signing an exclusivity deal with TM, venues can guarantee themselves a greater share of the effective ticket price. Artists are powerless to negotiate because of TM's dominant position in the ticketing market. It's a grubby little money-go-round scheme that exploits artists and fans alike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/business/12tickets.html

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#97

Post by jen729w » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

I just spent 3 weeks travelling the USA and we used Booking.com to see what was around. But then we went directly to the hotel's site to make the booking and you know what? Same price, if not slightly cheaper in some (not all) instances.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#98

Post by superasn » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:22 AM UTC

They similarly totally lie about matching the lowest price. Had the misfortune of booking through them once, then I found the same hotel for a much lower price on another site (makemytrip) so I sent a screenshot to the support.

After a day they outright DENIED to honor this "Lowest Price Guarantee" with some lame excuse. When I told them that I'll go to the small claims court I never heard back from them. Don't believe a word on this site.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#99

Post by specialist » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:23 AM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #22

To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room. Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster. It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting B…

The impact is worse than just hurting brands.

After hotels.com boned me, I've soured on the very notion of online bookings, price comparison sites for travel stuff, trusting ratings.

Caveat emptor (aka Freedom Markets™) is bad for business because it increases transaction costs (friction).

Reforms like consumer protection regulations are championed by businesses trying to make an honest buck once they get tired of the cheaters ruining the market for all the players.

Re: How Booking.com manipulates users

#100

Post by methodin » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 3:26 AM UTC

I thought the service was great at first - no hassle reservations with easy cancellation. That is until they billed for me a hotel I never stayed at. Ended up having to go through Amex and chargeback the charge since I had clearly cancelled it months before. It's a shame.