고등학교 공통영어2 (미래엔 김성연) 연계 글

Imagine a theater that sold popcorn in two sizes. A small bucket held four cups and cost 4,000 won, while a large bucket held ten cups and cost 7,000 won. In this imaginary theater, most customers bought the small one. One day, the manager suggested that the theater add a medium bucket with six cups for 7,000 won. Hardly anyone bought the medium, yet more customers began to choose the large.

A customer who chose the large that week may have thought it was a bargain. Another might not have looked at the small bucket at all. Many of them may have paid for more popcorn than they wanted.

This pattern is called the decoy effect, and the medium is the decoy. The effect was first shown in a 1982 study by three consumer researchers. At the time, a basic rule of rational choice held that adding a new option could never make an old one more popular. The researchers added an option that was clearly beaten by one of the original two choices but not by the other. More people then chose the option that beat it, although almost no one chose the new option.

Why does a useless option have this power? Choosing between the small and the large is hard because each has its own strength, so a customer must decide whether the extra popcorn is worth the extra money. The decoy, by contrast, makes one comparison easy. Next to the decoy, the large is clearly better, and choosing it requires no trade-off. The decoy thus hands people a simple reason to pick the large.

Later studies found the effect strong in some situations but weak or absent in others. The effect works best on people with no clear preference between the first two options. It also weakens when people decide how much each feature matters before they choose.

You may have made a similar choice yourself without noticing it. So what can a wise consumer do? To start, I suggest that every shopper decide what matters most before looking at the choices. I also recommend that a customer imagine the menu without the decoy and check whether the choice changes. Finally, I advise that a buyer compare each option with real needs, not just with its neighbor.