Psychological manipulation - what I learned trying to save money on a sandwich | Hacker News Reader

Psychological manipulation - what I learned trying to save money on a sandwich

blog.inklingmarkets.com

131 pointsnate49 comments

For those interested in social psychology, I recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuation by Robert B. Cialdini. The book elicited facepalm after facepalm after facepalm as I figured out exactly why people behave the way they do. It even helped me explain my own (often erratic) behavior.

If you're into sales or marketing, you're probably familiar with a large number of "compliance tactics" Cialdini talks about. But if you're a confused student like me, you have an eye-opening experience ahead of you.

That's funny. I was checking out Cialdini's site in particular when I saw a mention about the Dentists named Dennis thing, which made me look up the original research it came from and inspired this whole post. There's another Cialdini post I have coming up I think. That stuff has a lot of great food for thought.

A humorous anecdote: I know a few people who have taken psych classes with Cialdini at ASU, and they've all said that his course was among the most boring they'd taken.

If there was a feature that let people mega-upvote a reply at the cost of some of their own karma, I would have just used it.

I cannot recommend Influence enough. It does a great job of explaining persuasive techniques and mentions some ways to defend against them.

The discussion about ordering a sandwich reminded me of the exchange in Five Easy Pieces (1972) between Jack Nicholson and the waitress who would not allow him to deviate from the choices on the menu.

He basically wanted a side of wheat toast but this did not come with the menu item he wanted.

Jack: "What do you mean you don't make side orders of toast? You make sandwiches, don't you?"

Waitress: "Would you like to talk to the manager?"

Jack: "You've got bread and a toaster of some kind?"

Waitress: "I don't make the rules."

Jack: "OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelette, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee."

Waitress: "A number two, chicken sal san, hold the butter, the lettuce and the mayonnaise. And a cup of coffee. Anything else?"

Jack: "Yeah. Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules."

Waitress: "You want me to hold the chicken, huh?"

Jack: "I want you to hold it between your knees."

The whole exchange is found here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Five_Easy_Pieces.

Here's a clip of that exchange: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8

Sounded great, but you left out that the waitress threw him out! (See the clip in the other reply.)

There's a McDonald's near where I work that charges for some condiments (barbecue sauce, for instance) if you didn't order specific food items. If you ask for the condiment at the time of order, they almost always charge you. If you ask at the time of pickup and you paid with a card, they rarely do. If you ask at the time of pickup and you paid with cash, it's about 50/50. I think they're more likely to ask when you pay with cash because it's less hassle for them compared to charging the card a second time.

Plus, if you run a card for that small of an amount, you're actually losing money.

Actually credit card purchases are usually batched and sent out at the end of the day, so they could edit the charge to the customer without incurring any additional charges to their own merchant account.

Is that really the case? There has to be some kind of a transaction going on, since the card can get declined with insufficient funds. Do they check whether a transaction can proceed when you pay, and only then actually process the transaction at night?

Yeah, you can run an authorization transaction which only checks for sufficient funds. It's what happens in a restaurant when you pay with a credit card, get a receipt to sign, but can then add a tip to the total: a pre-auth is done on the card when you give it to them initially, for the amount of the bill plus some standard percentage, and the charge is actually run once they have your signature and know the amount of the tip.

I practice this same technique at a local restaurant named Amigos in the mid-west. The condiments are free inside, but in the drive through they cost $0.50... it works about 75% of the time.

For the folks thinking about the "they just don't want the hassle of changing the order"/cash versus credit card thing, I could have also shared a very similar example at Chipotle. Same girl, Stephanie, wanted a burrito bowl, but wanted the onions and peppers added on top. Back then (not sure they still do this) they always said, "that's a fajita burrito without the tortilla" and instead of the $5 for the "bowl" she'd have to pay $7.

So I reminded her about the sub place. The next time she went to chipotle she ordered the bowl, and then waited as they were making the thing and while it was in the middle of the line, this time she would ask as an afterthought can they add peppers and onions, and they never again raised the $7 versus $5 argument.

And if you know Chipotle, you pay AFTER your order is complete, so they could have easily charged her extra without any hassle. But I believe just like the ice cream example, since they already started making a bowl, they had it in there head that they were committed to making the $5 bowl.

I think you mean a veggie bowl? According to their online ordering app, peppers & onions are included. They charge extra for meat, but that wouldn't be a veggie bowl.

Yes, it was for a veggie bowl. But i didn't bring the example up originally because I think the veggie bowl changed. This example was about 6 years ago when I believe those peppers and onions weren't included with the veggie bowl.

We need a word for this technique where you get a customer to up their purchase by selling them on additional things.

Super size me

You know I wonder why the "super size me" technique isn't seen more with other products. Is it the bad PR/association with fast food or does that model not work for other business types?

I think the super sizing gimmick is easy to implement in fast food chains since it can basically be a bullet point in the training manual and you can encourage employees to use the tactic to increase their sales with game-like award programs (employee of the month, etc).

The idea of presenting non-essential products to impulsive buyers at the point of payment is much more ubiquitous though: supermarkets and candy/magazines comes to mind.

They may use the carrot, but trust me, its the stick that keeps them doing it. I once worked at a movie theater where if a manager heard you forget to upsell to a customer, you could be fired on the spot. I even witnessed it a few times. Manager's friend bought some popcorn, didn't get upsold, manager asked said friend if he was suggested anything, and when he found out he wasn't, walked over to the counter and told the kid to take off his vest and leave.

Was it for failing to upsell or was it simply because the manager was a jerk who wanted to feel important in front of his friend.

No doubt both. Managers at those kind of jobs tend to be dead-ended mid 20's, and need to push around teenagers to feel important since anyone their age can see the truth. They also tend to prey on teenage girls... not a pretty sight.

Note: Probably not the case everywhere, but definitely was the norm where I grew up in the burbs.

I've had employees at the Starbucks inside Barnes & Noble get annoyed at me for only ordering a tall drip coffee, since it drives down their average transaction size, this being the metric on which they're being judged.

I tend to respond to upselling attempts with silence and a blank stare.

But it is! It's just cross-selling. When you sell a guy a suit, you don't offer the belt first, you go for the money item, the suit. Then after he buys the suit you sell the belt because its less of a big deal since he's already spent the money.

With that in mind, how much is super sizing in relation to the original meal?

Sounds like exploiting humans' tendency to disproportionately take into account sunk costs.

Perhaps is can read it as anchoring too... once the suit price is in mind, the price of the belt seems small.

More like relative cost- the price of the belt is a small % of the price of the suit as a whole. Similar to how it's easy to sell the power seats, w/e other luxury on a car for $200 when the car is $20k+.

Anchoring would be if the suit salesman shows you a $3k suit to start out. Or more realistically say an $800 suit for your average person-not so outrageous as to offend you, but probably still out of your range, so you'll be more likely to spend $400 on a suit than if he had just started out in a more standard $300 range.

"Would you like an extended warranty with that, sir?"

Isn't that known as an "upsell" or "upselling"? It's what the guys at the sneaker store do with socks and laces, no?

Socks and laces is actually 'cross-selling'. Up-selling is getting the buyer to buy something more expensive than the thing they are currently buying/contemplating buying.

Yes! That was the one.

We now need a word for this technique where you use irony to mock someone. ;)

I've noticed this kind of thing at many food establishments, most notably Jack-in-the-Box. They actually have a system which lets you order any meal exactly how you want it a-la-carte style, i.e. you can order 1 sourdough bun + 1 grilled chicken patty + 1 slice of cheese, and they charge you JUST for those items. It's amazing.

However, whenever I ordered a sandwich this way, the employee would almost always enter my order in as a Number 6, which actually, is a TOTALLY different sandwich and includes bacon, sauce, etc., none of which I requested. It is also, not surprisingly, much more expensive. At first I would have a long dialogue with the employee, explaining that I just wanted those items and that he could enter them individually into the computer (sometimes a manager would have to explain how). Eventually I figured out that if I just prefaced my order with, "I'm ordering these items a-la-carte.", most of the time I get what I want with little or no confusion.

> This is what GoDaddy does in spades. Love or hate GoDaddy, they are kicking ass at it.

For what it's worth, I dropped GoDaddy because I got tired of the upselling. So while it may work on average, you can't expect to retain every customer.

I let a domain expire, about two years ago, that I had registered using GoDaddy. To this day they still email me every couple of weeks telling me this is my "last chance" to renew it.

Obligatory TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o...

Countries with low organ donation rates are simply countries where the box isn't checked by default, and in countries with high organ donation rates the box IS checked by default. Basically the decision of whether or not to donate your organs is such a complex decision that the majority of people do not waste the mental resources on it and just go with or justify the default choice.

edit: if anyone is interested in cognitive biases and heuristics, wiki Daniel Kahneman. Only psychologist to win a Nobel Prize (was for Economics). Also heuristic mentioned in the original link is an example of Anchoring & Adjustment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_and_adjustment

That is NOT why modifying your order-in-progress works.

It works because they would rather modify why you just ordered, rather than you canceling your order entirely.

It works the same way in the supermarket when I use a coupon that is one day past the expire date or not quite exactly the same item, etc. They don't have to take the coupon but they realize they CAN take it and if they don't, I will likely not buy the product in the first place.

If you ask them ahead of time, before you even get the item, they can circumvent you hassling them. Afterwards, it's easier to just give into you.

I'm wondering, how does that work from the store's end? Would they still be able to get the coupon amount back from the manufacturer even though the transaction was made past the expiration date? Do manufacturers even check that?

The store has two weeks to submit the coupons to their clearinghouse. They also make (a small amount) of money on the coupon vs. you paying in cash (unless they do doubling where they lose).

Technically they are not supposed to accept a coupon that expired 24 or 48 hours ago. But if you ask in the middle of checkout, you'd be surprised where 3 out of 4 times they will say no problem (if you have a decent cashier).

Virgin America is king at this. My $300 fare always manages to cost me $500 by the time I return from my trip. And magically, unlike when I get upsold by Continental, I don't mind the extra cost at all.

Ahh yeah. And Apple too. It's just a little prettier than GoDaddy :) After you configure your $3000 laptop it's do you want this for $25, or how about this for $50 kind of stuff.

I've probably spent over $200 on Mini DisplayPort Adapters alone.

You might want to check out the mini-displayport -> hdmi adapter from monoprice[1]. $8.55, and I've been using one without any problems for over a year.

(disclaimer: not at all affiliated with monoprice.)

[1] http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&c...

awesome, thanks!

I'm confused; what does Virgin America upsell you on?

I let them talk me into paying an extra sixty dollars for First Class one time, cuz it was only sixty dollars. Worth it as a one-time experience, but for a one-hour flight the comfier chair barely made a difference.

So, I guess I am the only jerk who, after losing all hope to get the fair price, would just order the special, then pick out the meaty parts in front of them and politely ask for the garbage bin?

The vege sub is a ripoff.

When a sandwich/ice cream/big mac artist concedes to this, its most likely because they've already rung you up and don't want to go through the hassle of canceling the order and then re-inputting it correctly.

I don't get the logical leap from vendor to customer here. Impulse purchases are not exactly the same as an underpaid worker not wanting to have to deal with a hassle. It's still a valid technique for getting what you want, but not directly applicable when you are the seller.

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