Prada stores carry a few obscenely expensive items in order to boost sales for everything else (which look like bargains in comparison). People used to download music for free, then Steve Jobs convinced them to pay. How? By charging 99 cents. That price has a hypnotic effect: the profit margin of the 99 Cents Only store is twice that of Wal-Mart. Why do text messages cost money, while e-mails are free? Why do jars of peanut butter keep getting smaller in order to keep the price the "same"? The answer is simple: prices are a collective hallucination.
In Priceless, the...
Prada stores carry a few obscenely expensive items in order to boost sales for everything else (which look like bargains in comparison). People use...
Why do text messages cost money while e-mails are free? How did Apple persuade people to pay for music instead of downloading it for nothing? The answer is simple; prices are collective hallucination. William Poundstone reveals the hidden psychology of value.
Why do text messages cost money while e-mails are free? How did Apple persuade people to pay for music instead of downloading it for nothing? The answ...
We are hard-wired to believe that the world is more predictable than it is. We chase 'winning streaks' that are often just illusions, and we are all too predictable exactly when we try hardest not to be. In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined the phrase 'representativeness' to describe the psychology of this behaviour. Since then representativeness has been used by auditors to catch people fiddling their tax returns and by hedge fund managers to reap billions from the emotions of small investors. Now Poundstone for the first time makes these techniques fun, easy, and profitable...
We are hard-wired to believe that the world is more predictable than it is. We chase 'winning streaks' that are often just illusions, and we are all t...
