Daily Axiom

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Decoy effect

2026-03-06

The decoy effect can be exploited to nudge a consumer to a specific decision by adding a clearly worse decoy offering. The decoy makes the other option look good and can change consumer preference – while it obviously doesn’t change the actual ratio of value to price, just the framing.

A decoy offering only exists to be dominated by the offering that is pushed.

In addition to marketing other findings suggest that this effect translates to votes, public tender and other areas.