Anchoring bias causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece of information on a topic. Every next option we see is automatically compared by our brain with the first instance we had seen.
People’s minds tend to get stuck on the first value they see. This way, any discount will be much more effective if the original price is crossed out.
For example, to apply the anchoring bias, give the original price of a product/service, and then cross it out. The customers will see how much they gain with that particular discount.
For example:
- “Yesterday: $500. Now: $250”
By the way, mind it that “now” is more dynamic than “today”, too. Giving the new, smaller price right next to the old, bigger one makes it look more attractive.
We interpret each piece of information we get on the basis of (or in reference to) the one we have seen earlier. Research has been conducted to show how people estimated Mahatma Gandhi’s age when being biased by two different values. The guesses were higher as those values were higher, too.