harvey

well, in fact you gave the answers yourself with the samples you provided. First, you mention the "7 +/- 2" concept, a concept that modern behavioral psychology doesn't accept anymore (one of the reasons being this would work only on stimulus-free environments, like the experiment you mention proves: any external stimulus may trigger a totally different answer). In this experiment, you mention that people had to remember only 2 actions/variables/answers and they made it all wrong by just adding a distraction element.

Then you mention another research where less options ended in more sales (which, btw, is a pretty known and tested marketing tool), and right after that, after proving that "less distraction=higher sales" you propose to add even more distraction elements.

Now, I think I know where you're aiming to, it's a flavor of what is known as "frustration marketing" (people end buying your option simply because all other options are worse), but this is a technique used on very specific environments and usually after everything fails (the most common context is when you know your product is really bad and, of course, you want to sell it anyway. Another common example in adult is the CJ model).

But here's the thing: throughout years and decades, the real treat in marketing and advertisement is to stand out and make your product look like the only choice, whether you're using logical or visceral arguments. All intents of covering a marketing action with crap and confusing customers always ended bad: either you won't sell, or you'll make a sale, but you'll lose your customer for ever (you even gave the reasoning yourself:

So, yes, your customer, frustrated, will never buy from you again.

Now, on to The Economist sample:

First, go to http://www.economist.com/members/mem...act=sub_center

There you'll see 2 very important things:
a) they're not using this "great" technique, instead they're very specific and to the point (you'd have checked this first, in fact everything I'm writing starts and ends here)
b) the "experiment" shows a really big variation in price, which probably means the data is extremely old (hence, absolutely useless in research environments) . That will logically explain the results: when subscribers weren't as used to read electronic newspapers, they were usually choosing the print version. Now, if you offer this base product and then add value, and furthermore, you add it.... FOR FREE, well, the only thing that amazes me is that 100% of people didn't choose option 3, no matter if they planned to use the added value or not, it was FREE. But even if there was some cost, I'm pretty sure people would have still chose that option, because of perceived value pricing and aspirational/status strategy. So, IMHO, none of the experiments you chose prove your point (in fact they prove it otherwise, as noted) and you can look for any advanced marketing book or online articles and you'll see how everything ends in "simple and to the point"

Finally, a thing that many people in adult couldn't care less: a customer is gold. It costs many times more to get a new customer than to keep it, then I really don't get why would you use a technique to get a customer and then lose him/her immediately due to frustration, it really shocks me. And when I say frustration, I mean 2 sides: client frustrated with the product (which might be excellent, but YOU HAD TO CHEAT THE CUSTOMER, so he/she will always think there's something wrong) and client frustrated with himself/herself because of the bad decision he/she took: thus, this technique goes against what is common sense, what has been researched, tracked and measured thousands of times and what EVERY (and I mean EVERY, like in ALL) marketing study, book and article says: you want to make your customer feel good about himself/herself, it's the #1 rule in behavioral marketing, and probably the only one undisputed to this day, exception made of those going after "shocking" effects (like those articles you mention)

Note: All the above being said, you can play games with consumer's minds, and as a matter of fact that's what marketing does every time, every minute, every single day. You can confuse them, you can make them buy things they didn't even think they needed, you can CREATE needs. But there's one thing that will never change: at the end, the deal ends with a sale.

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