Your Voice: Beware of the ‘decoy effect’ when shopping; reflecting on Covid-19 and its impact on Hong Kong (long letters)

Imagine you’re going to a cafe for a coffee. You plan to grab a small latte. When ordering, you see that the small costs HK$35 and the large HK$45. You do not really need a big cup of coffee, but you buy it anyway because it’s a better deal. And that is when you fall for the hidden force that shapes our shopping choices – the “decoy effect” – which can cause us to spend more than we need.

When a decoy option is present, we tend to make decisions based less on which option best suits our purposes and more on what feels like the most advantageous choice. Unfortunately, our instincts do not always point towards the best choice. Most of the time, the decoy effect leads us to pick a more costly alternative which does not add much benefit.

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Decoys are commonly used by businesses to nudge us into buying more than we intended. The products most commonly pushed with decoys are unhealthy foods and sugary beverages, which increase our risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other chronic conditions.

The decoy effect also determines our digital purchases. When installing a firewall or subscribing to a streaming service, we often choose between different tiers: basic, premium or pro. Most people opt for “basic” as it’s the cheapest option despite the lengthy adverts included, but if we notice that “pro” is only slightly more expensive than “premium”, yet unlocks a lot more features, we might be tempted to spend the extra money for a better experience.

Despite its seemingly malicious intentions, digital software isn’t designed to intentionally manipulate consumers using the decoy effect. However, social media platforms have AI systems that personalise posts, reels or music suggestions to your feed. The feed is customised for you so you will spend more time on the app. When a basketball lover skips a music-related post, the algorithm nudges them to view posts more to their liking simply by monitoring the time they spend on each post. It will then construct a feed filled with posts to keep them hooked.

Nudges do not manipulate our behaviour, but involve subtle changes to an environment, pushing us in their desired direction. The decoy effect technically does not violate our free will as it does not impose any restrictions on us, thus affecting us without realising it.

Psychologist Dan Ariely was interested in three options available for subscriptions to a magazine: US$59 for an online subscription, US$125 for a print-only subscription, and finally, US$125 for both print and online access. He presented these options to his students and asked them all to pick one. 16 per cent of the students chose the cheaper online subscription, 84 per cent chose the print and web subscription, and nobody chose the $125 print-only subscription.

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Next, Ariely removed the option nobody wanted – the US$125 print subscription – and asked another group of students to pick from the two. This time, 68 per cent picked the US$59 online subscription, and only 32 per cent favoured the print and web subscription. In Ariely’s words, “The most popular option became the least popular, and the least popular became the most popular.” Even though most of the class would have been happy with an online-only subscription, adding a decoy choice nudged them to spend almost US$70 more on something they probably did not need.

To sum up, it would be most helpful for us to focus on the reason for buying something in the first place.

Charis Chan, Malvern College Hong Kong

The mask regulations have been gone for over six months, but I cannot believe that Covid-19 has been around for over three years already. I clearly remember that at this time in 2020, my parents and relatives were having huge discussions about Covid: buying masks, sanitisers, food and more from supermarkets. Since I live in Hong Kong, I got to know about Covid very early, almost as soon as it started.

I learned about Covid when I was 11, during a library class at school. We were analysing different articles about it and discussing possibilities of why it could be a strong virus. As time passed, I realised the seriousness of Covid. Initially, I thought that Covid was just a small issue happening only in China, and I did not have to do much about it.

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Weeks later, Hong Kong started reporting cases. While my parents panicked, all I could think of was whether our lives would continue as usual. Although there wasn’t much we could do, my parents reached out to friends in China to ask about the situation there. They said that hospitals were full, and people were waiting on the streets for beds. Some patients even lay on the floor, enduring freezing temperatures. There wasn’t enough food, so they had to wake early and queue outside supermarkets. I felt grateful that such things were not happening in Hong Kong.

One day, while watching TV with my family and seeing how Covid was spreading worldwide, we found out that regular school would be switched to online schooling. My initial reaction was, “Yes! I will not have to wake up so early any more!”

Before the pandemic, holidays were my favourite time of year because I disliked school. However, after two months of online school, I found it boring. I had to stare at my laptop all day and night, couldn’t meet my teachers and friends in person, couldn’t use different equipment to make learning more enjoyable, and wasn’t even allowed to leave the same room. It was then that I finally realised how much I should have cherished learning and being at school because it is not something everyone gets a chance to do.

Exciting activities, such as holiday travel and my concerts, got suspended. More warning notices appeared all over the streets, and products like hand sanitisers and masks became highly popular.

The pandemic was like a roller coaster for me. Every time it seemed like Covid would “end,” a new transmission chain would be found, and all plans would be delayed or destroyed again.

Looking back, it wasn’t entirely a negative experience. It allowed me to take more time to explore my interests, such as doing extended studies in various subjects. It has also been interesting to observe how Hong Kong has coped over these years.

Although I have found some positive aspects to Covid, I still wonder when it will truly vanish from the world, along with the killer flu that we are currently facing.