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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

You make a good point but I don't think this is the main dynamic at play. I'm much more hesitant to buy a $5 app, a one-time purchase, than a $7 beer.

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Is it possible that you now (like most consumers) have been conditioned to expect apps to be free? Meanwhile, nobody expects anyone to give them a pizza or a beer for free.

I guess you've never gone to university then, because those places don't function without free pizza. It is the only reliable way to get students (and postdocs) to attend your event.

(Yes, I'm aware that attendance is the "price" for the pizza, but let's just say that cold pizza can still be had for free.)

While that's an interesting edge case, what I probably should have said is that pizza and beer is something adults expect to exchange money for, as opposed to apps.

Those two cater needs of different levels on Maslow's hierarchy. People don't have to pay for air and sometimes even for (clean enough) water, but if they'll have to they will pay for that before paying for some $5 digital artifact.

I think you know the value of the beer vs the unknown app.

Maybe that's because most apps are garbage.

I've noticed that I'm more open to spending money on food rather than things like apps/music etc. Buying a $2 app is a week-long decision for me. Whereas I regularly spend ~$10 on a pizza when I'm bored.

I'm the same and it doesn't really make any sense. Ok food is physical and tasty, but you enjoy it for maybe 15 minutes vs a game that could provide 100s of hours of entertainment?

The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get. With an app, 90% are crap, 9% are ok but not what you personally prefer, 1% are great. So, gambling $2 with a seemingly 1% chance of greatness feels like an app costs $200. The reality is not that bad. But, it's all about how it feels.

On top of that, it's not even really about the money. You don't want to feel bad about getting tricked into paying for a crap app. You'd feel like a sucker. It would be frustrating. People do all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid feeling embarrassment and frustration --to the point that it's dangerous to call out a scammer because they are likely to get geniunely indignant and angry to avoid feeling the embarrassment of their obvious lie. Procrastination to avoid possible frustration is very, very common.

And that's exactly why guarantees are so effective for sellers. It takes that risk off the customers shoulder, and due to the "Oh, it'd be embarrassing to refund this app, since that means I made a mistake", very few people actually go through with the guarantee.

One pitch I found pretty neat goes roughly as follows.

Buy <product> now, and if within (30|90|365) days you at any point feel unsatisfied with it, feel free to ask for full refund, no questions asked, and you get to keep our <marginal cost 0 infoproduct>, valued X$, as a gift from us for trying it out.

Short breakdown of it.

    "Buy <product> now" - bog standard call to action  
    "(30|90|365) days" - if the product is any good, longer guarantees usually reduce returns, since they give more time to grow on the product and forget the guarantee date. 
    "feel unsatisfied" - eg. you don't even need a reason to return it 
    "full refund" - that's pretty d'uh now, try a 110% refund for extra excitement 
    "no questions asked" - eg. we're not going to hassle you for trying to use this. you will not feel stupid. 
    "get to keep <infoproduct>" - even if you opt out, you get something
    "valued X$" - with a home made infoproduct, that value is pulled straight from the posterior, but gives a value anchor

And suddenly that 3000$ product seems less risky than a 2$ app.

Another reason to offer this money back guarantee when selling products online: you're already doing this whether you want to or not. Your customer's credit card company will usually offer a chargeback within 90 days, and then you'll cop the penalty fee for the chargeback. You may as well offer the same guarantee as the cards do, but encourage the customer to come to you instead. You'll avoid the fee and potentially get intel on what problems customers are having with your product.

> And that's exactly why guarantees are so effective for sellers... very few people actually go through with the guarantee.

Not always -- many people are shameless jerks. REI used to have a lifetime no-questions-asked return policy, but people were returning worn-out shoes and such, so they had to discontinue it.

Great advice, implemented it: https://productcomms.club/product-communication-basics/

I guess it's also training. We have many positive experiences of the "risk" of ordering pizza has turned out well. The number of experiences we have had to psotively reinforce app purchase positive experience is likely two orders of magnitude smaller.

Also, the benefit is more immediate. "I will enjoy this food within the next 30 minutes" is closer temporally than "I will enjoy this app over the course of the next few months or maybe even years".

>The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get.

Two counter-arguments:

People buy enticing stuff off of supermarket shelves all the time though -- things that they are not certain if they'll like them.

Lots of people who have bought and generally like an app (or so they say), still complain for its price on boards, even if it's comparable to a beer. E.g. they ask why a $2.99 app isn't $0.99 etc.

So it's not just "uncertainty".

Think you nailed it on the head with your example - with food, you're fulfilling a necessary contract with your body. You have to eat, and even if the pizza is terrible and you're unhappy with it, you've satisfied the necessity of eating.

With the app, not only are you out a few dollars, you potentially commit the sin of wasting your time by not fulfilling any desires. Though the upside is exponential (in relation to the food), so is the downside.

You also have to decide whether you want to spend time on the app.

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