03 - The Cost of Zero Cost скачать в хорошем качестве

03 - The Cost of Zero Cost

This chapter reveals why "FREE" is not simply another price, but an "emotional hot button" that generates irrational excitement. Zero is special: it makes us accumulate useless things (promotional t-shirts, magnetic calendars, conference pens), wait in long lines for free Ben & Jerry's ice cream, or buy products we don't want just to get the third one free. After a brief tour through the history of zero (from the Babylonians to Silicon Valley), Ariely presents revealing experiments with chocolates. They offered people a choice between Lindt truffles (premium Swiss chocolate) and Hershey's Kisses (ordinary but good chocolate). When truffles cost 15 cents and Kisses 1 cent, 73% rationally chose the premium truffles. But when they lowered BOTH prices by 1 cent (truffles to 14¢, Kisses FREE), the choice dramatically reversed! Now 69% chose the Kisses, abandoning the premium truffle for only 14 cents. The relative price difference (14 cents) was identical in both cases, but FREE changed everything. The Halloween experiment was even more revealing. Joey, a 9-year-old boy dressed as Spiderman, received 3 Hershey's Kisses and two options: trade 1 Kiss for a small Snickers (1 ounce) or 2 Kisses for a large Snickers (2 ounces). Rationally, giving 1 extra Kiss (0.16 ounces) for 1 additional ounce of Snickers is a 6x better return on investment. Joey and almost all children chose the large Snickers: they did the rational calculation. But when Ariely offered Zoe (a princess with a magic wand) a different choice: large Snickers for 1 Kiss OR small Snickers FREE (without giving up any Kiss), 70% of children chose FREE even though it was objectively a worse deal. The same pattern repeated with MIT students choosing between Amazon gift certificates: $10 free vs $20 for $7. Most chose the $10 free, ignoring that paying $7 for $20 gave them $13 net gain (vs $10 gain with free). Why does FREE! blind us so completely? Ariely argues it's our intrinsic fear of loss. When something is FREE!, there's no visible possibility of loss: it's safe, risk-free. But choosing something that isn't free introduces the risk of having made a bad decision, the possibility of loss. This fear makes us jump at FREE! even when it's not the best option. Corporate stories confirm it: **Amazon France**: When they charged 1 franc (20 cents) for shipping on large orders, sales didn't increase. When they changed to FREE shipping (same 20-cent discount), sales exploded. The difference between "almost free" and "FREE" is enormous. **AOL**: When they switched from hourly payment to $19.95 unlimited monthly, they massively underestimated demand. Users jumped from 140,000 to 236,000 overnight, and doubled their online time. Users responded to "free" use (after the fixed payment) like hungry people at a buffet, collapsing the system. The chapter warns about FREE! traps: choosing "free" bank accounts without benefits instead of $5 accounts with benefits that would save money; no-closing-cost mortgages but with exorbitant rates and interest; or products we don't want simply because they come with a free gift. Ariely confesses his own irrationality: he bought a red sports Audi (when he needed a minivan for his two children) partly because they offered FREE oil changes for 3 years. It wasn't the only factor, but FREE! served as a disproportionately large additional attraction he could cling to justify what he emotionally wanted. The conclusion is that FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what's offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. In the "territory of prices," zero isn't just another price: it's in a category of its own, with a gravitational effect we can't escape. Understanding this can help us make better decisions, especially when choosing between a free option and a paid one that might offer more real value.