The useless option that makes you spend more

In a famous experiment, The Economist offered three subscriptions: web-only for $59, print-only for $125, and print+web also for $125. Almost nobody wants print-only — it costs the same as getting both. So why include it? When students saw all three options, 84% chose the $125 combo. When the pointless print-only option was removed, most switched to the cheap $59 web plan — and average revenue dropped. The "useless" option wasn't useless at all.

This is the decoy effect (formally, asymmetric dominance). People struggle to judge value in the abstract, so they lean on comparisons. A decoy is an option that is clearly worse than one target choice but not the others. It doesn't win any sales itself — its job is to make a nearby, more expensive option look like an obvious bargain.

The key is dominance: print-only is beaten by print+web on every dimension (same price, less stuff), which makes the combo feel like a steal. Once you notice it, you see decoys everywhere — the medium popcorn priced a hair below the large, the mid-tier SaaS plan positioned to make "Pro" irresistible.

The practical lesson for anyone setting prices: context, not the product, often drives the choice. Adding a carefully-placed inferior option can shift buyers toward your target tier without changing the target's price at all.