CONTRAST EFFECT
A customer wearing his old but favorite brand of shirt enters a shop and sees a shirt of the same brand with a price tag of P 500.00 but discounted at a price of P300,00. He does not hesitate to buy the item and pays for it quickly thinking it was a very good bargain. He does not know that its price is actually P300.00. This is what psychologists call the contrast effect. The discount or mark down marketing strategy would be untenable without the contrast effect.
A pretty woman marries an average looking guy and her friends out of curiosity asks her why, no offense meant, she settled for such an ordinary looking man. She says her husband is kind, loving, considerate and rich. Her friends did not know that in contrast, her parents are ill mannered, inconsiderate, and often struggle to make ends meet. The contrast effect again at work.
The contrast effect is an unconscious bias that happens when two things are judged in comparison to one another instead of being assessed individually. Our perception is altered once we start to compare things to one another. We tend to judge them relative to each other rather than on their own merit.
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