Read Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior for Free Online Page A

who would choose Product B–. Why would you choose a print only subscription when you could choose the online and print for the same price?
    And your intuitive judgment would be correct; when that new option was given to a sample of students, not one person chose it. Nevertheless, its mere presence drastically changed the outcome and increased revenue from $8,012 to $11,444. Why? The percentage of people choosing the online only subscription dropped from 68 percent to 16 percent, whereas the percentage of people choosing the online and print subscription (a more expensive option) increased from 32 percent to 84 percent.
    Due to contrast effects, Product B became a seemingly better option because people could compare it to Product B–, a clearly worse option. Because there was no equivalent product to which Product A could be compared, people were more likely to choose Product B because they perceived it to be the best option.
    When people are undecided between two different options, you can influence them to choose a particular option by adding a new option that is similar to one, but either better or worse in some aspect. When you add that similar option into the mix, you give people an anchor that they can use to judge the existing similar option. If the new option is better, then the new option is perceived as the clear winner, but if the new option is worse, then the already existing similar option becomes the clear winner.
    To apply this “decoy effect” toward your business, suppose that you’re selling consulting services. It might be favorable for you to offer three options: one option that is priced low, one option that is priced moderately, and one option that is priced extremely high. The very high priced option will convert more people from the low priced option to the moderately priced option, helping to generate more overall revenue for your business (Huber, Payne, & Puto, 1982).
    Even if you’re not selling products, you could apply the decoy effect toward minuscule life moments, such as influencing your friends to eat at a particular restaurant. Suppose that you’re arguing with your friends about where to eat. Some are arguing for a particular Mexican restaurant, whereas you and a few others are pulling for a particular Chinese restaurant. If you know that your friends dislike another particular Chinese restaurant, you could put the odds in your favor by throwing that option into the mix Because that option is similar to yours but worse in some respect, you trigger a contrast effect that will make your existing Chinese restaurant seem even better.
    Door-in-the-Face Technique. To help spread the word about my book to other people, would you mind purchasing additional copies to give to your friends or coworkers? What? You don’t want to do that? Alright, well, would you mind just purchasing a copy of my next book for yourself?
    The previous paragraph illustrates the door-in-the-face technique , the strategy of asking for a very large request and then following with a much smaller request. A large favor can trigger a contrast effect that can make another favor seem even smaller, which can help you garner higher rates of compliance with that separate request.
    In the original study that examined this technique, Robert Cialdini and his colleagues (1975) asked random college students to volunteer at a juvenile delinquency center for two hours each week over the next two years. You can probably guess what happened. Everyone immediately jumped at the incredible opportunity, right? Not quite. As expected, nearly everyone politely turned down that large request.
    But something interesting happened when the researchers followed that large request with a smaller request: to take the juvenile delinquents on a two-hour trip to the zoo. Without that initial large request, only 17 percent of people agreed to the zoo trip, but when that initial large request was presented (and rejected), compliance for the zoo trip