Anchor point and anchor trap

Anchor manipulation is one of my favorite topics under the Contrast Principle to discuss. We shall see how easily it is to manipulation someone based on their anchor points.

In The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold, Dr. Levine explains the different ways we are manipulated; they are:

The base rate fallacy. The base rate fallacy suggest that sometimes we use the wrong anchor point, or base rate. We may for example base our decisions on stereo type believes, or past conditioned influences and habits. And even due to plain ignorance and laziness to understand a product better than to just accept marketing messages and sales pitches as facts.

An example put forth by Levine is Bayer, the aspirin maker. Bayer's advertisement boast on how their product contain '100% pure aspirin'. The average consumer may be attracted to this point and feel that Bayer aspirin is superior than other brands. Little known to aspirin consumers is that ALL aspirin contains 100% of the drug.

Another example quoted by Levine is Anacin. Anacin added caffeine to their aspirin, and instead of promoting their brand of aspirin they made a statement that 'Anacin contains the pain reliever doctors recommend most'.

With a little clever twisting of words your contrast may have just gotten more intricate.


The decoy. The decoy ploy is initiated by showing customers a variety of optional similar products in the product range that he/she will not buy for a number of reasons like high price or an unattractive feature. As a result another product that the marketer ultimately intents to sell will look more attractive to the customer.

Another explanation will be:

The decoy item is placed together with other items. And by down selling that item (usually a higher price item), it makes the other item seem more value for your dough and reduces buyer's dissonance.

An interesting experiment done by Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky illustrates an example with an oven:

One set of customers were given a choice between a $179 Panasonic oven, or a $109 Emerson oven; both with a 35% discount offer. Another set of customers were given a third choice of a $199 Panasonic oven with only a 10% discount.

The results of the experiment showed that when the second Panasonic oven was not offered, 57% of the customers chose the cheaper Emerson model, and 47% bought the Panasonic. But when the $199 Panasonic oven was 1 of the 3 options given, 60% of the customers chose to buy the cheaper $179 Panasonic oven, and only 27% bought the Emerson model. 13% of the of customers bought the more expensive Panasonic oven.

What this experiment reveal is that when a more expensive version of the same brand is offered, the cheaper model of that brand is likely to be more attractive and sold.

Another great example is masking a decoy with a decoy, described by Levine is that of a sweater store:

Customers lured by a sales promotion comes into the store and sees a messy table (on the right-hand side of course) with leftover cashmere sweaters at 40% off (this is the decoy of the decoy). Then walking further down in the same direction the customer sees another similar table selling cotton sweaters that were priced 20% to 30% higher than the cashmere the customer saw earlier (this is the decoy). Now further down the customer sees a neatly arranged colorful table with similar cashmere sweaters at prices lower than the 40% off cashmere and much lower than the decoy sweaters.

So you can guess what the result was - yes, customers rushed to grab what was laid out on the last table.


Anchor Trap

I would like to end this section by warning you of the anchor trap. An anchor trap is usually used to make a high priced appear lower. I will leave you with the following example by Dr. Robert Levine of a cable provider in Kentucky:

Storer Cable Communications wanted to raise subscriber rates, mailed out a notice saying:

"It's not often you get good news instead of a bill, but we've got some for you. If you've heard all those rumors about your basic cable rate going up $10 or more a month, you can relax: it's not going to happen! The great news is... the rate for basic cable is increasing only $2 a month."

What happened? Storer managed to secure an extra $2 per month from their customer's monthly cable bill by letting the customer think that they were saving on $8 per month. How? Because rates were expected to go up by $10 (or more) a month.