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Offer a Similar (Yet Expensive) Version

A similar, yet more expensive version of your product will make your existing product seem more appealing.

Nick Kolenda
Updated on
$65 blender next to similar $85 blender

You might be familiar with a popular study involving three subscriptions to Economist magazine:

  • $59 — Digital
  • $125 — Print
  • $125 — Print and Digital

At first glance, it seems wrong. You can buy the digital and print for the same price as the print subscription.

But alas, it’s not a mistake.

Although nobody chooses the “print” subscription, this decoy option shifts demand toward the “print and digital” subscription — which is more expensive than the digital subscription (Ariely, 2008).

  • Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational (pp. 278-9). New York: HarperCollins.