Perception Is the Most Fascinating Area for Decision Science

An anchor is often needed to help consumers perceive a sale price positively. Telling customers that your product is in a sale is usually useless unless you provide some context. In Decoded, Phil shares a great story about two advertisements for Snickers Ice Cream. The first ad had contained no anchor and barely changed the perception of a consumer. But the second ad introduced a ridiculously high anchor stating, buy 18 Snickers Icecream bars for your freezer. This anchor, despite being ridiculously high, still changed consumer perception and ultimately their behaviour - an increase of 1.2 bars per customer.