For those of you unfamiliar with the famous children’s story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears retells the story of a home invasion conducted by an unsupervised, hungry child. Over the course of her journey, she finds herself faced with the need to make several choices. Which bed do I sleep in? Which chair do I sit in? Which bowl do I eat out of?
In every case, Goldilocks made her decision based on the options that were not too hard or too soft, but the option that was “just right.” She demonstrates a cognitive effect that people, when presented with similar choices, tend to gravitate towards the more moderate of those choices.
In sales, the Goldilocks principle describes the practice of providing a premium as well as a budget option alongside a regularly priced option to make the latter seem more appealing. A good example of this is present in most liquor stores where you’ll often see a $45 bottle of wine next to a $15 bottle and a $90 bottle on the other side. In this example, you might assume the store wants us to buy the $90 bottle, but their positioning is actually priming us to buy the $45 bottle. Read More.