On Thursday, July 9, 2009 at 11:53:08 (-0700) Jim Devine writes: >FWIW, here's another review: > > >The New York Times > >July 6, 2009 >Books of The Times >Absolutely, Positively Free ... if You Think You Can Afford It >By JANET MASLIN > > >CHEAP: The High Cost of Discount Culture By Ellen Ruppel Shell >296 pages. Penguin Press. $25.95. > >FREE: The Future of a Radical Price By Chris Anderson >Illustrated. 274 pages. Hyperion. $26.99. > >... >In its \x93Free\x94 version the non-Kiss candy is a Lindt truffle initially >priced at 15 cents while the Kiss cost a penny; 73 percent of subjects >chose the truffle and 27 percent picked the Kiss, with nobody >abstaining. Then the prices were lowered by 1 cent each, and 69 >percent of the subjects chose the free Kiss. Mr. Anderson doesn\x92t >bother to account for the rest of the sample group, but he does use a >quotation from Mr. Ariely to bolster the case that his \x93Free\x94 makes: >\x93Zero is not just another price, it turns out. Zero is an emotional >hot button \x97 a source of irrational excitement.\x94 >...
It all depends on who gets to define "irrational". Something that is free has no "price", it is no longer the object of a transaction (the kiss from your sweetheart, a gift to a friend, etc.). Is it really "irrational excitement" to see something that is offered to you for free as fundamentally different (a gift) than something offered to you for 1 cent (an item for purchase)? Would a person receiving the gift not see the person offering it differently than had the person who offered it attached a price --- that is a friend or benefactor versus a potential rival or solipsistic cheat? Wouldn't this tiny change in price massively alter the circumstances under which the exchange is made and thus the choices made under those circumstances? Bill _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
