From the article: We mentally compare having the prospective item to giving up what we already have (our 'endowment'), but because we're loss averse giving up what we already have (our reference point) looms large.
Perhaps this reduces the risk of being tricked. However, when a genuine win-win situation is presented, it would be a significant source of transactional friction.
I think the problem is getting the user/consumer/customer to see the win-win. If you can present it successfully, you can make the sale. But the theory presented says it's a 9X problem to do so.
"Gourville's research suggests that the average person will underweight the prospective benefits of a replacement technology for it [E-Mail] by about a factor of three, and overweight by the same factor everything they're being asked to give up by not using email. This is the 9X problem developers of new collaboration technologies will have to overcome."