4 ms·

It's MOS. Manufactured Outrage Syndrome and its what people in tech do. They see something they personally dislike, decide the world should work a different way

It's MOS. Manufactured Outrage Syndrome and its what people in tech do. They see something they personally dislike, decide the world should work a different way, and then write a blog post arguing for it. The argument is that your conversions drop from people searching for coupon codes. We'll all just have to test that see for ourselves, won't we. This isn't the kind of thing where we've suddenly discovered a new counter-intuitive best practice for shopping carts. It looks like a few finicky people will be upset and call it bad customer service. I for one am willing to write them off as wannabe usability experts and continue to make the majority of users happy most of the time rather than cater to a small but noisy group. In the end you can't please every customer. Ever. Next we'll see a post about why not having a coupon code field is the worst customer service decision in the world too.

Domenic_S 13y ago
What? No. This was actually studied, with data and everything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/do-promo-codes-or-coupon-codes-do-more-harm-than-good http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/do-promo-codes-o...
mijustin 13y ago
I wrote the post from an anecdotal POV, and just started digging into the research now. ;) Here's what I've found so far: - Oliver & Shor found that: "prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control." http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpbm_reprint.pdf http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb... - This study by Oliver & Swan (1989) found a big link between a consumer's perception of pricing fairness, and their overall satisfaction with a purchase. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251411?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102530121071 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251411?uid=3737720&ui... - Xia, Monroe, & Cox found: "For price comparisons, the other-customer comparison has the greatest effect on perceived price unfairness because of the salience of such a comparison" http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/weitz/mar7786/Articles/price%20fairness.pdf http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/weitz/mar7786/Articles/price%... - This study by Google found that in a real-world setting, "more than 40% of shoppers have left a retail store without purchasing because they knew they left a coupon at home". http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/from-clipping-to-clicking.html http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/from-clipping-t...

Domenic_S 13y ago

What? No. This was actually studied, with data and everything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/do-promo-codes-or-coupon-codes-do-more-harm-than-good http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/do-promo-codes-o...

mijustin 13y ago

I wrote the post from an anecdotal POV, and just started digging into the research now. ;) Here's what I've found so far: - Oliver & Shor found that: "prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control." http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpbm_reprint.pdf http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb... - This study by Oliver & Swan (1989) found a big link between a consumer's perception of pricing fairness, and their overall satisfaction with a purchase. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251411?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102530121071 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251411?uid=3737720&ui... - Xia, Monroe, & Cox found: "For price comparisons, the other-customer comparison has the greatest effect on perceived price unfairness because of the salience of such a comparison" http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/weitz/mar7786/Articles/price%20fairness.pdf http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/weitz/mar7786/Articles/price%... - This study by Google found that in a real-world setting, "more than 40% of shoppers have left a retail store without purchasing because they knew they left a coupon at home". http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/from-clipping-to-clicking.html http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/from-clipping-t...