On the subject of my post Free for All Permission Sharing, predictably irrational Dan Ariely contributes an important measurement to the debate:
“Both books reference our Hershey’s Kiss experiment that is described in Chapter 3 of Predictably Irrational. If you recall, in one trial of one study we offered students a Lindt Truffle for 26 cents and a Hershey’s Kiss for 1 cent and observed the buying behavior: 40 percent went with the truffle and 40 percent with the Kiss. When we dropped the price of both chocolates by just 1 cent, we observed that suddenly 90 percent of participants opted for the free Kiss, even though the relative price between the two was the same. We concluded that FREE! is indeed a very powerful force.”
As Dan pointed out there are nuances in the experiments and perhaps there are other factors when you move away from the chocolates. Yet it is clear that when you start charging, it’s a whole different ball game.
Further Reading:
Free for All Permission Sharing
Dan Ariely on Seeing Through Expectations
The Five Question Interview – Dan Ariely
