Dislodge Indecision with New Choice

Sometimes a shopper is frozen into indecision because of tradeoffs among the prices and the quality of the features. One way to dislodge ties is to introduce a new alternative which is clearly inferior to one of the items in the tie.
     Here’s my adaptation of the technique: A customer comes into an electronics store to buy a printer. The customer narrows the choices to two and then pulls out an article she brought to the store with her because the article includes a bunch of ratings of printers. Printer Model A, at a price of $180, has a rating of 50. Model B, for $260, received a rating of 70.
     The customer can’t decide between the two and finally says she wants to look at other stores. The salesperson replies, “May I show you one more model that I think would help you decide? We carry a complete selection of printers, so I hate for you to need to go shopping somewhere else.” The customer agrees to look at one more printer.
     The salesperson presents a model from a manufacturer that does a lot of advertising, but has recently not received high ratings for their printers. If asked, store staff don’t give the model high recommendations. Still, they carry the model because people ask for it based on familiarity with the advertising. The salesperson says, “The price for this model is $180.00, like Model A, but if you check your article, you’ll see that it received a rating of 30, not the 50 which Model A received.”
     The introduction of the inferior alternative often dislodges the tie and results in a purchase decision. With this set of facts, the choice is more likely to be Model A.