At a coffee shop in Bluffton, South Carolina, people have been spontaneously paying forfuture customers’ drinks on a fairly consistent basis. Sometimes, those who are not even looking to buy coffee for themselves will come in and donate money for future (anonymous)…
I’ve explored the power of free in the context of tattoos before, and anyone who saw last years’ comedy Bridesmaids no doubt laughed at this particularly memorable scene. But this story out of the Netherlands caught me a little off guard just the…
When it comes to sterilization, Denmark has had a rather turbulent history. In 1929, in the midst of rising social concerns regarding an increase in sex crimes and general “degeneracy,” the Danish government passed legislation bordering on eugenics, requiring sterilization in some…
In many past experiments we have shown that people are often overly excited about things that are FREE (see Predictably Irrational). An interesting opportunity to further look at this behavior presented itself when a few weeks ago a nightclub in New York…
A few years ago, a marketing team from a major consumer goods company came to my lab eager to test some new pricing mechanisms using principles of behavioral economics. We decided to start by testing the allure of “free,” a subject my…
The New York Times and Time Magazine have recently posted interesting articles about two new books that discuss consumer behavior: Chris Anderson’s Free and Ellen Ruppel Shell’s Cheap (see links in The New York Times and Time Magazine). Both books reference our…
Someone should remind Michael Bloomberg that free does not always mean free lunches. The billionaire New York City mayor recently rolled out a transit proposal that sounds too good to be true – probably because it is. In order to speed up…
A few people purchased the original version of Predictably Irrational since it came out in February 2008. Now that the expanded edition is out, it seemed to me that the right thing would be to get the extra material to those who…
What if on your next coffee run, you discover that Starbucks has started running on the honor system? All the baristas are gone, and in their place, you find Tupperware filled with coins and bills. Would you pay for your daily soy…