sweetsI saw an experiment on TV where two bowls of sweets were placed on a table at the entrance to the office, under a sign saying ‘please help yourself’. One bowl contained multi-coloured sweets; the second bowl contained only blue sweets.

It turned out that the bowl of multi-coloured sweets was emptied far sooner than the bowl of blue sweets.

Why? Because people took a big handful of the multi-coloured sweets to make sure they got one of each colour, but only took – I think – an average of three single-colour sweets, because that was enough.

Similarly, people apparently eat about 40% more when they help themselves from a buffet compared with being served a plateful of food.

With this trend in mind, some restaurants are starting to offer three or four mini-cakes as dessert, at a price that is greater than the price of a single dessert.

It seems that:

  • People like choice
  • People like having a little taste of everything
  • People will pay more for a little variety

So how can you use this idea in your marketing?


1 Comment

jackiebarrie · July 30, 2013 at 8:46 am

Read more about ‘Why customers want to make choices’ in this blog post by Internet psychologist, Graham Jones. http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/2013/blog/internet-marketing/your-customers-want-to-make-choices.html

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