Decoy effect

Decoy Effect (literally decoy effect) is a term in marketing (also known as asymmetric dominance effect), which describes the phenomenon of a stronger preference of consumers to a product taking into account two specific products, caused by the offer of a third " asymmetrically dominating" product. An asymmetrically dominant product is better than one of these products in many ways, but by no means dominated both products.

This particular influence on the purchasing decision process is examined in marketing research. A consumer, the products according to attributes (characteristics, "features" ) chooses not considered each product individually, but he compares all the products with respect to him important properties. One of the known selection rules, the dominant rule that is used by the decoy effect. After the dominance rule, the product will not be chosen if there is another, which is equivalent in all properties and is superior in at least one property. (see Nieschlag, Dichtl, Hörschgen. marketing 18th edition, page 181f )

Example

If it comes to deciding between different MP3 players, the consumer will generally see the higher storage capacity and the low price as positive attributes; while some consumers want to have a player that can store more songs, find like a player that costs less. The Decision Situation 1 two devices are available:

In decision situation 2, the asymmetric dominant object C is only in terms of storage capacity better than B and A. By no means better than the object C is added - which would usually reject most consumers, provided that a lower price for the model paid with a higher storage capacity may be - would the object A, the non-dominant object are chosen more often than if only two choices, as would be in the decision situation 1 available.

Object C is thus a " bait " (English decoy ), whose purpose is to increase sales of object A.