Wired: How do Internet companies motivate your desire to consume?

You may not be stupid, but you will be deceived. Over the years, good salespeople have been adept at exploiting the weaknesses of human nature. With behavioural economics booming, we have a more precise view of the psychological flaws that people tend to fall into well-designed scams. From a psychological standpoint, people are willing to buy 0.99 yuan of things, do not buy 1.00 yuan of things, this phenomenon is called the "left-side effect"; Sometimes people spend money on gym cards and never use them, which is called "optimism"; sometimes the return thing doesn't go back, which is called "Buying rationality". The internet giants, from Amazon to Zynga, have used the same tricks to lure us on their nets, play their games, buy their stuff, and grow into Internet giants themselves. See how we got fooled and how we fooled ourselves.

Amazon

Removing those small inconveniences can change people's decisions. Eric Jonhnson and Dan Goldstein have done a study that asks people, "Do you quit the organ donation program", and when you design options, they're not just asking, "Are you willing to donate?" Instead of "donate," Ask them, "Are you willing to quit the organ donation program?" "(Preset for ' donation '), this change has raised the answer to support donations from 40% to 80%. This is the power of "presupposition". We all obviously tend to make the most effortless choices.

For most people, Amazon is the default option because everyone's credit card numbers and addresses are on the web. If we ask: how valuable is the time to re-enter information on other networks? They would say: not much. However, at the moment of making the purchase decision, we did not think carefully, the input that information looks too terrible, the result chose Amazon.

Amazon also used two ways to solve the problem of freight, and freight for many customers are psychological barriers. First, Amazon's super Saver shipping,25 dollars above free shipping. In this way, many of the deals that buy only one item turn into buying two pieces at a time, and people often buy a book or a CD to save money. What's more interesting is Amazon Prime, which I used for years, with shipping charges capped at 79 dollars a year, so that almost all of the items I bought were delivered free 2nd. I think this way makes Amazon's buyers spend more. There are three reasons: first, we will not search for another store if we know this is free shipping. Two or one on Amazon, freight is no longer a psychological barrier, so the impulse to go shopping. Third, because we have paid the freight, freight is already paid costs, we will buy things to use the paid freight, diluted costs.

NETFLIX

Because of the public psyche, Netflix became a company for the day. In traditional video stores, customers often struggle to pay an extended lease or lose a DVD. Netflix not only has no overtime fees, there are countless movies to choose from, so each user has a list of movies to see. It's like building a smart system that allows everyone to find movies they like, who doesn't?

In fact, however, users don't see as many DVDs as they think. (Of course, it's good for Netflix, save postage to raise profits). Why? Because Netflix lets us choose the movies we want to see in the future, we're not good at predicting the movies we want to see.

Here is the article by Danial Read and two other authors, which show that what people theoretically want to do is very different from what they want to do now. They asked participants to choose a movie in a group of elegant films (such as Schindler's List) and a group of popular movies (such as My Cousin Vinny), if asked: What movie would you like to see after a while? They will choose elegant movies. Q: What do you want to see now? Most people choose popular movies. In theory, we want to be people who watch serious movies, even the French are no exception. But I don't see it today. So, that long playlist is just a longing for a movie that we don't want to see.

Now Netflix offers video transmissions and we don't watch DVDs. There is video transmission, our choice is more than just want to see the film, pay the money, we have the right to see any movie anywhere, although actually did not see several.

Groupon

For me, the amazing thing about Groupon is not its massive discounts, but the fact that it frees its target consumers from the embarrassment of buying bargains. Most users must despise this behavior if they investigate how Groupon users think of cutting off coupons in newspapers to buy things.

In fact, people's bias against discount coupons is real and widespread. A recent paper in consumer research found that people around discount coupons are treated as poor people, and those who use discounted coupons don't have to say. Using Groupon, however, is a recognition that can be seen in the name of Groupon alone.

The concept of group behavior is a powerful motivation in changing people's behavior. Noah Goldstein of the University of California, Los Angeles, hosted a study several years ago on how to encourage reuse of hotel towels. In one experiment, they used two different kinds of cue cards: the first, the reuse of the towel for environmental ecological appeal, 35% of the customer obeyed the hint. The second added to the social factor: 75% of the guests asked to participate in the event were repeatedly using towels ... They are really good for the environment. The result obeyed the guest of the cue up to 44%.

Groupon's time limit is another tool, and customers have only one day to decide whether to buy a discount coupon or to lock in a discount. Generally speaking, we do not buy things, will not rule out the possibility of buying later, because can always go back to buy. But in Groupon, you have to make a clear choice, and your choice is not to not buy discounts, but to never buy them again. Faced with such a choice, customers will consider if not buy, how to regret later, because do not want to regret, so willing to buy now.

Zynga

A few years ago, I was working on a paper about how people view the value of goods. My colleagues and I make origami in Japan, fold animals, and then let them quote for their works. As a result: they offer an outrageous price for their origami--in direct proportion to the time they pay for it--and the so-called "Ikea effect" can explain the phenomenon, and the shelves are perfect and valuable after exhausting hours of installation of a rickety Swedish bookshelf.

This is certainly the best explanation for the charms of Zynga's Farmville and other social games. People build their farms step-by-step, they invest, and the farm is valuable. In short, the more complex the process, the greater the difficulty, the more time, we like their own work, the more interested in the game.

Social factors also strengthen people's desire to play this game, many activities in the game are interactive, people give you useful things, you should repay them. Economists know that reciprocity is a very strong motivation. Ernst Fehr A groundbreaking study of the so-called Trust game, in which players need to make two choices: 1. Alone 10 dollars. 2. Give the second player 40 dollars, he knows: If you choose a second, the second player also have to make a choice, their own exclusive or with the first player equally.

From the rational start, the second player should choose exclusive, since know this, the first player also choose to leave 10 dollars. But when the real person plays, people show mutual trust and gratitude, acting irrationally. When someone is good to us, we will repay them, in the Farmville, repay is to spend more and more time playing this game.

Facebook

I'm not exactly a Facebook generation, but I have a Facebook account. Moreover, I taught in the University of 800 students, almost all obsessed with Facebook, even the class is also used. A few students told me that before the exams, they would log on to Facebook and then hand the computer over to a friend to change the password until the test was over and then tell them the password. Looking back at the history of Facebook, it is clear that the company is constantly innovating and challenging our limited self-control, a feature that has made us return to Facebook again and again.

The beauty of Facebook is its message wall: it's a public space where we can talk, and others can add opinions. Space, everyone is a friend, you will feel obligated to respond to those messages, comment on others to your message, and then write a message for others.

We also want to show ourselves on the wall of the message. As we manage our own property, property also reflects a person's personality. (psychologist Sam Gosling's research shows: to understand a person, not necessarily spend time with him, by understanding his property can learn more, the wall of the message is the same, in fact, is a window of the ego. Everyone wants a self between the real self and the one who wants to show it, so everyone has the incentive to constantly monitor and maintain that personal space.

Facebook is addictive, and maybe because it improves our position in a cheaper way. When Facebook introduced the Gift service (now deactivated), people questioned: Who would spend a dollar to buy a virtual gift to send a friend? However, in the first 10 months of the service, 24 million gifts were delivered. Because we want to pretend to be generous, and want to play a lot of gifts, from both of us have great social value, converted into a dollar to buy how many status, absolute value for money.

Apple

If you are an Apple user, you must have noticed a phenomenon in the itunes and App Store buying process, in which the average customer receives an invoice in a matter of hours or days, and perhaps Apple is dealing with credit card transactions in batches to reduce transaction costs. This brings unexpected benefits to the company: The delay reduces what economists call "the pain of payment".

If I open a restaurant, I am good: a 20-dollar dish 20 stutter, one dollar a mouthful. I propose to pay for it: 50 cents a mouthful, no food, no money, and I'll count when you eat. The idea looks good, but what's the fun of eating? Most people prefer to pay in the traditional way. Because if consumption and payment happen at the same time, we will not be so happy. The APP store deals like a dish of money, under which the money automatically transfers out of your credit card, but after a while you receive the invoice, dividing the consumption and payment into two processes, reducing the "pain of payment".

The delay was a boon for Facebook, but Apple made a mistake in pricing and sold it too cheaply. There is an economic phenomenon called "price curing", meaning: the price that a buyer is willing to pay for a product is limited by the first pricing, and once the price is fixed, it cannot be restricted. Apple apps have taken a lot of effort to develop, but in the app Store, people's mental expectations are no more than 4.99 dollars, and most should be 0.99 dollars.

How can we avoid this? For first-time users, they should not be allowed to use them for free, even if they only receive 10 cents. Free is a big temptation to pull down the price of a product that people are willing to pay to buy.

How do we cheat ourselves?

We can only blame ourselves for all the temptations of the Internet world. Looking back over the past few years, our reliance on email has reached a state where everyone thinks that others are looking at emails all the time. This is not a good thing for most people. My friend, business analyst Ken Rona's research suggests that if you charge a fee (5 cents) For each message, you can make it more effective by giving people a word of the word when writing a letter. However, as with other habits, the reliance on e-mail is all in the way. I tried to check the mail only in the evening, so I went to a meeting and found that the meeting was canceled 15 minutes before.

Why is that? Most of the emails are useless, and it's just because we keep checking the emails that we have these unwanted emails. The study by famous psychologists B.f Skinner and C.b Ferster shows that the effect of random reinforcement ratio on people's behavior is greater. A pigeon presses the button 100 times, feeds it once, and it keeps pressing. If randomly fed, sometimes after 50 times, sometimes after 100 times, pigeons will work harder to press. Continue pressing the button even if no longer feeds. E-mail is the same, we get important information again and again, see the mail came, involuntarily to see, although found this letter meaningless.

We are also often fooled by an old technology, which is the calendar. The calendar shows the unplanned time as blank, and it encourages us to fill the time with events. If the calendar future time is not blank, if fill in advance, such as filling in thinking, writing, planning and so on, imagine how we interact with the calendar how different. We will not easily overlook opportunity costs, and each time we accept a mission, it means giving up something else.

Another issue with the calendar is the "resource-rich" phenomenon described by behavioral economist Gal Zauberman and John Lynch. Their research suggests that people are always overly optimistic about the amount of time and money they are planning for their future time and money, and less realistic about time. Lynch, my mentor, once gave us a piece of advice: if someone wants you to do one thing in a year, ask yourself: Will I do it in the next two weeks? Look at the calendar, it seems like we have nothing to do from now on, but in fact, the ordinary week of next year and the week of this year will not be any different.

Of course, the calendar doesn't change, and I continue to waste time doing things that are not in the calendar.

This article is translated from the nvnv99 by the translator.