5 ms·
> This is also a case where consumers say they want one thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For example, pretty much everyone says they prefer
by IncRnd 4y ago
> This is also a case where consumers say they want one
thing, but their behavior is a different matter. For
example, pretty much everyone says they prefer the full
price to be shown up front in search result pages. But,
as someone who is privy to a ton of A/B testing in this
area, the opposite nearly always results in higher
conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and
fees are only tacked on during checkout.
That's completely wrong. People don't want hidden fees. They chose those options that have hidden fees, because the fees are hidden and the total cost appears lower. Your AB tests don't compare what consumers want but what consumers are tricked into accepting.
- xbar 4y agoAgreed. It seems that the A/B testing proves that humans are easily tricked, not that they like hidden fees.
- stillsleepy 4y ago[flagged]
- stillsleepy 4y ago[flagged]
- yamtaddle 4y agoIt's because nobody actually has trouble understanding what "free" means in these contexts except the same small percentage of morons one can get to say any dumb thing one wishes to find someone saying, and people pretending not to understand it on Internet forums to passive-aggressively make a very stupid point. Everyone else gets it. You're not preaching some great message to the sheeple, you're just making noise.
- II2II 4y agoIn my neck of the woods, it is called public health care or public health insurance. Oddly enough, neither the government nor the media feel compelled to make it sound like you're getting extra value by calling it free. Of course, this applies to a broad range of public services such as education and libraries. (As for why these services should be offered at no cost to the users, it has to do with accessibility to people regardless of their income. No one pretends that no cost to users means that it is free. Everyone understands that it is wrapped into their taxes and that taxes are tied to their income.)
- jghn 4y agoI interpreted that as suggesting people would wind up buying nothing if all the options are perceived to be too expensive. But sone people will continue down the rabbit hole if you get them in the funnel to start with
- IncRnd 4y agoHow did you interpret the text to mean that? Higher conversion doesn't mean nothing was purchased. the opposite nearly always results in higher conversion, where there is a lower up-front price and fees are only tacked on during checkout.
- anon84873628 4y agoYour parent meant _some_ people end up purchasing nothing, when the initial price shown is higher. Basically the top of the funnel is more price sensitive than after they have already progressed a bit towards the purchase.
- IncRnd 4y agoThank you. I do understand that, but that comment was in the context of being an interpretation of something that clearly didn't state that, which is why I asked for clarification as to how that interpretation had come about.
- acdha 4y agoI wouldn’t read the claim as “consumers secretly do like hidden fees” but rather “people say they don’t like them but don’t actually care enough to stop giving money to companies which use them”. It’s like how people might say they want to eat better food if you ask them directly but when you record what they actually eat it ends up looking quite different. On HN you’ll see a similar dynamic with privacy, business ethics, etc.: people say they don’t like being tracked but won’t even try using a browser other than Chrome or worry about local businesses but won’t consist paying +-10% more not to buy through Amazon.
- yamtaddle 4y agoPeople who've already wasted time getting to the point where they can see the fees, and are confident that all your competitors do the same thing anyway, aren't likely to bail over them. That's probably the most accurate way to state the "preference".
- acdha 4y agoExactly: there’s a ton of psychology research around that effect and businesses use these techniques because they work. I applaud California for trying to make this illegal since something reliably profitable is not going to stop otherwise.
- brigade 4y agoIncidentally, California mostly [1] already bans hidden fees for cars, and IMO the car-buying experience in California is better for it compared to other states. [1] the current workaround is dealers listing the MSRP on their websites and arguing that that isn't an advertised sale price... but at least that only works for new cars.
- 8note 4y agoYeah, it's that people can be successfully tricked. People don't like being stolen from, but if you can get away with it, it must be a good thing
- amf12 4y ago> because the fees are hidden and the total cost appears lower Consumers still understand the total cost, albeit at the end. We aren't tricked into accepting it most of the times. Take Airbnb for example. Consumers compare and find listings, but at checkout, the extra charges get added. They see what they will pay, but at this point they just "accept it", rather than starting over again.
- IncRnd 4y ago> Take Airbnb for example. Consumers compare and find listings, but at checkout, the extra charges get added. They see what they will pay, but at this point they just "accept it", rather than starting over again. That's the point. These sorts of hidden fees are used to trick consumers. A consumer who just read through two different website offerings, only to see a hidden fee at the end of each likely will give up, despite not actually understanding any more about which possible offering is the lower-cost offering. Hidden fees are literally lying to the consumers. No the offering isn't actually $0.99, it's $271.