persuasion
Decoy effect
What is the decoy effect?
The decoy effect happens when adding a third, intentionally worse option shifts your choice between the other two. The decoy isn’t meant to be selected - it’s there to make one of its neighbours seem like the better deal.
Also known as: asymmetric dominance effect, attraction effect, decoy pricing
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The demo
The same two plans at the same prices. Add the decoy and watch the bundle stop looking expensive and start looking like the obvious pick - though its price never moves.
Digital
£59/year
- Website & app
- Weekly print edition
Print only
£125/year
- Website & app
- Weekly print edition
Best value
Print + Digital
£125/year
- Website & app
- Weekly print edition
Two plans, no decoy. The bundle costs more than twice the digital plan - so most people take Digital and move on.
What this demo shows (text version)
Two subscription plans are shown: Digital at £59 a year, and a Print + Digital bundle at £125 a year. With only these two, the bundle looks expensive next to the digital-only plan, so most people choose Digital.
Switching on the decoy adds a third plan - Print only, also £125 a year. It costs the same as the bundle but gives less (no website or app), so it is plainly the worse deal. Its only job is comparison: against it, the £125 bundle is obviously dominant, and the bundle suddenly looks like the sensible choice rather than the dear one. No price changed - the extra option simply reframed the bundle. That is the decoy effect, working through asymmetric dominance.
Adding a third, deliberately worse option changes which of the other two you pick - the decoy is never meant to be chosen, only to make one neighbour look like the obvious deal. Lay out choices honestly; if a plan only sells because a worse one sits beside it, you’re steering the decision rather than informing it.
With two plans, the bundle looked dear and you leaned towards digital. Add a print-only plan at the same price as the bundle - plainly worse - and the bundle suddenly reads as a steal. Nothing about it changed. The decoy just handed you an easy comparison to win, and your eye took it.
The trick is "asymmetric dominance": the decoy is clearly beaten by one option (the target) but not by the other, so you settle on the easy winner instead of the harder digital-versus-bundle judgement. Take the decoy away and the hard comparison comes straight back - which is how you know the third option was doing more work than it looked.
You meet it everywhere once you see it: the medium popcorn that exists so the large feels sensible, the middle pricing tier built to be passed over, the "good / better / best" table arranged so "better" always wins. My habit is that when three options appear and one seems pointless, I ask who it is really there to sell.