Frontlines | Shopping on the Wing
It's a marketing ploy that routinely traps shoppers. Faced
with only two choices, say microwave A, small and cheap, and
microwave B, large and pricey, a buyer is apt to pick either
one. But throw in choice C, which is slightly more expensive
but also slightly smaller than B, and shoppers flock to
microwave B. "Item C," says behavioral economist Dan Ariely,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "is used as a decoy to
draw attention to target item B. If we'd act on a purely
rational basis, our choice between A and B should not be
influenced by the addition of another option." It's called the
"asymmetrical dominance effect," and it's been proven to work
for everything from condoms to cars.
New research1 indicates that it also works for
marketing nectar--if the "buyer" is a hummingbird. Using
plastic flowers with varying concentrations and volumes of
sugar water, the researchers observed that the birds usually
behaved rationally, going for flowers with more and sweeter
nectar. But, by introducing additional plastic flowers with
other differing concentrations and volumes, says researcher
Andrew Hurly, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, the
scientists duped the birds into feeding from less-than-optimal
"target" blossoms.
Does falling for cheap marketing tricks reduce fitness? The
authors believe that making decisions in a split second--on
the wing, so to speak--and picking the right flower nearly all
the time has advantages over flapping about and making the
right choice every time.
--Silvia Sanides
1. M. Bateson et al., "Context-dependent
foraging decisions in rufous hummingbirds," Proceedings of
the Royal Society, in press.
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