Fooled By The Framing
5 examples of how marketers take advantage of our biases
Hello there,
One of the most common misconceptions we harbor is the idea that we make our choices, like which underwear to buy or which herpes treatment option to go for, in a completely rational manner.
The truth is that we’re all emotional decision-makers, influenced by subtle factors that we can hardly hope to see through.
One such technique to influence the human mind is the framing effect- a cognitive bias in which we buggy humans decide between options based on the positive/negative connotations created by how they are worded.
A solid marketer instinctively understands this bias and uses it across a wide range of situations. Let’s look at a few revealing examples to see how this bias is exploited:
Large number effect: In a research experiment, customers were asked which discount offer they’d choose if they were buying a product worth Rs 480:
a) Get Rs 120 off
b) Get a 25% discount.
People judged the first option to be much better in this experiment. This happens because people make a split-second decision by looking at the absolute numbers.
“120” appears much bigger than puny little “25”, so they end up thinking it’s a better option. You may think “Yes, but we have much more time to take a step back and calculate properly while buying stuff”. But nobody does that.
As a marketer, it’s much more beneficial to exploit this large-number effect and frame your discount to make it sound and feel big. Conversely, for a product priced at Rs 48, a 25% discount was considered much better than a Rs 12 discount!Power of FREE: Researchers know that people are suckers for free stuff, so they purposely reposition a discount so they can use the word “free”- it’s a trigger word that automatically attracts us to such options and makes us choose them instinctively, similar to our large-number bias as described above.
This is called the power of free, and the most common manifestation of this is a 33% discount- you rarely come across a “Get 33% Off” discount because it always gets positioned as “Get 50% extra FREE”. Both are offering the exact same benefit, but this option uses both the large-number effect and the power of free to devastating effect.
The moment of truth Framing bad news with an upside: When the captain of EasyJet had to announce to passengers that there was no air bridge for their flight, he did it cleverly. He said something like:
“We have good news and bad news. The bad news is there's no air bridge and there's a bus, but the good news is that the bus will take you straight to the passport control office so you don't have to walk with the bags.”
The brilliant thing about this framing is that what he positioned as “good news” is something that always happens (customers are always taken to the point regardless of the presence/absence of an air bridge). But once the customers perceive that information as an advantage, they feel better about the situation instead of being simply told a disappointing piece of info.Reframing to avoid a negative positioning: A major American credit card company knew that because of their high commissions, swiping a card at a retailer would require customers to pay a surcharge, which they’d not like. Customers would quickly conclude that "surcharge = loss" and not use a card.
So they lobbied hard to make the surcharge pricing the "regular price" and the cash payment as a "discount". They know you care much less about a 3% discount than you care about losing money to "extra charges" (this cleverly changed the framing to avoid triggering loss aversion). This helped them retain market share- which they'd otherwise have lost with their negative "surcharge" positioning!Presenting costs as opportunities: When you buy a Ferrari, you could get it shipped to your place…or just for a puny 500 euros extra, you could fly down to their HQ, get a “tour of the factory”, and drive back home with your brand new toy. Rich people fall for the second option all the time, and therein lies the genius of this idea. By framing it as an exotic tour, the brand has convinced the customer to fly down (saving them their delivery costs), pick up their car- and pay extra money to do all of this! That’s like an employee working overtime…only to pay his company some extra money for it!
The next time you’re about to pick a product or a discount option- take a step back and check if you genuinely need it…or if you’re just being fooled by the framing.
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