Using Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Neuroeconomics to Maximize Sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Using Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Neuroeconomics to Maximize Sales

#11

Post by dschiptsov » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 8:54 PM UTC

freshhawk wrote: post #10

dschiptsov wrote: post #9

These are so primitive and obvious manipulations, that most of target customers already evolved (learned by experience) to ignore them.

Got a source on that? My experience and the research disagree, these take advantage of lower level cognitive biases that are prevalent (or maybe universal) in human beings.

Lots of people have even a habit of identifying such tricks. Others, like me, have an automated tendency to map them to the list of cognitive biases from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases - the thing that deserves to be printed and framed.

Re: Using Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Neuroeconomics to Maximize Sales

#12

Post by plancien » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:25 PM UTC

Nice article ! One comment : on the "Selling Time Over Money" part, it seems to me that some business manage to do the opposite. Take Ikea, for instance. Typically you buy some furniture there, hoping to spend little money in exchange of giving up your sunday afternoon precious time. If you take into account the time spent assembling the furniture, with a reasonable hourly rate, some furnitures there are not so cheap anymore.

The Ikea business implies that sometimes we prefer money over time.

Re: Using Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Neuroeconomics to Maximize Sales

#13

Post by allsop8184 » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

plancien wrote: post #12

Nice article ! One comment : on the "Selling Time Over Money" part, it seems to me that some business manage to do the opposite. Take Ikea, for instance. Typically you buy some furniture there, hoping to spend little money in exchange of giving up your sunday afternoon precious time. If you take into account the time spent assembling the furniture, with a reasonable hourly rate, some furnitures there are not so cheap…

That's a really good point, and I guess IKEA often uses their low prices in their advertising. Wal-Mart does the same.

Re: Using Behavioral Economics, Psychology, and Neuroeconomics to Maximize Sales

#14

Post by freshhawk » Tue, Sep 18, 2012, 10:38 PM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #11

freshhawk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a source on that? My experience and the research disagree, these take advantage of lower level cognitive biases that are prevalent (or maybe universal) in human beings.

Lots of people have even a habit of identifying such tricks. Others, like me, have an automated tendency to map them to the list of cognitive biases from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases - the thing that deserves to be printed and framed.

I certainly have that same tendency, and have fun playing the "name that bias" game.

But we are both in a tiny minority and are still influenced by those biases even when we recognize them. I would argue we would be less influenced when we recognize them but that's conjecture on my part.