Influencing with anchoring

Tuesday night. Ajax plays a Champions League match against Glasgow Rangers. In the studio are professional sage Theo Janssen, Jan Boskamp and Wesley Sneijder. As many as 2.6 million people watch it.

– “Guys, what will it be tonight?” asks presenter Humberto Tan

– “I think 2-1 for Glasgow” says Theo
– “1-1” expected Jan
– “2-2 it will be” muses Wes

Notable predictions? No, because these experience experts still have the recent hefty losses (namely 1-6, 4-2, 2-1, 0-3) against Napoli and Liverpool in their minds.

That’s called anchoring. An interesting behavioral phenomenon.

It means that people always make their estimates based on available comparables. The funny thing is that everyone is just as likely to be influenced by relevant figures as by irrelevant ones.

Example?

Two groups were asked how old Gandhi was when he died. Group 1 was asked the question “did he die before or after he was 9?” Group 2: “did he die before or after he was 140?” The average estimated age of his death was 50 in the first group and 67 in the second.

You too can use it to guide your customers’ behavior. Just put a useless code 768 next to your price of 4.45 euros. Then suddenly that amount feels much more attractive. And your sales go up.

That game, by the way, just went 1-3 for Ajax. So you see, Victor. Anchoring is perception, not reality. But yes, perception is reality….