{"id":494,"date":"2006-02-28T11:25:45","date_gmt":"2006-02-28T11:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiolect.truth.posiweb.net\/notes\/?p=494"},"modified":"2006-02-28T11:25:45","modified_gmt":"2006-02-28T11:25:45","slug":"the-price-is-right-regardless-of-the-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2006\/02\/28\/the-price-is-right-regardless-of-the-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"the price is right regardless of the cost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zac at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ortholog.com\">ortholog.com<\/a> writes about an experimental test of buying irrationality using Ebay. Quoting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><br \/>\nTest auctions on eBay showed that most people prefer to pay a low price for an item and also pay postage (American: &quot;shipping&quot;) than pay a higher price and get free postage, <em>even when the former added up to more than the latter<\/em>. A CD for $5+$6 postage is preferred to a CD for $10+freepost. It wasn&#8217;t presented as that stark a choice: multiple auctions with different price-postage ratios revealed a net preference for low item price and a poor correlation between auction success and stated postage costs. Interesting but hardly surprising: the salience of the price is greater than the cost of shipping (the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anchoring\">anchoring<\/a> cognitive fallacy), and people in general are <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_cognitive_biases\">not as rational or systematic as they\/we believe<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/>\n(Zac&#8217;s links. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ortholog.com\/archive\/deserving_memes\/the_price_is_right_regardless_of_the_pos.php\">read the full post here<\/a>)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindhacks.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/influence_by_robert.html\">Influence<\/a>, Cialdini highlights <i>scarcity<\/i> as one of the six principle factors of persuasion. In an auction they combine particularly strongly: scarcity of time (the item is only on sale for a limited period), scarity of product (items are sold individually, not just as one-of-many &#8216;off the shelf&#8217;) and competition (from other buyers). Add to this heady mix the price\/postage sleight of hand and it is no wonder you get choice irrationalities.<\/p>\n<p>[Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindhacks.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/the_price_is_right_r.html\">mindhack.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zac at ortholog.com writes about an experimental test of buying irrationality using Ebay. Quoting: Test auctions on eBay showed that most people prefer to pay a low price for an item and also pay postage (American: &quot;shipping&quot;) than pay a higher price and get free postage, even when the former added up to more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KQtW-7Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}