63 / 84
November/December 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
63
dustry may wish to consider other similar approaches predicated
on this principle.
Anchoring Effect:
The anchoring effect reflects our tendency to
be influenced by irrelevant numbers, according to Daniel Kahne-
man, author of Thinking Fast and Slow. An example: One group of
people was asked whether Gandhi was more than 114 years old when
he died, while a separate group was given 35 years old as a referent
point. The former group guessed Gandhi was much older than the
latter group. (He was 78 at his death.) This dynamic is closely related
to “framing,” the context in which choices are presented. People’s
perceptions change dramatically if you say, “You have a 90% chance
of survival” versus “You have a 10% mortality rate.” The outcome is
the same, but the messaging is very different. The first framing in-
creases people’s acceptance. People will place a greater value on “Your
chances of winning have increased to 65%” than “Increase your odds
of winning by 5%.” The industry should continue to look for ways
to emphasize the positive odds of winning and explore different an-
choring concepts. “Your odds of winning are X%, but your odds of
having fun and contributing to good causes are 100%!”
Subconscious Nudges or Priming:
This principle is about tak-
ing cues from context. Here is an example from Ken Hughes, a noted
shopping behaviorist:
The people responsible for cleaning a men’s restroom in an interna-
tional airport were frustrated by the failure of signs and other efforts to
promote cleanliness among users. Men were not very accurate at the uri-
nal. Finally, someone hit upon a successful “nudge,” an effective “prim-
ing” mechanism: let’s place facsimiles of flies in the urinals. The flies will
provide fun and engaging targets for men off-loading their coffee, tea,
and ale. It worked perfectly! Men took careful aim, dominated the faux
flies, and improved the cleanliness of the restroom a hundredfold.
What is the lottery equivalent of a faux fly? How can lottery,
through environmental cues, incentivize certain purchase behavior?
Perhaps by emphasizing the products/games lottery would most like
to sell by making their signage larger, “in lights,” a different color, or
at the center of physical and virtual displays.
Let’s examine another example from Ken Hughes. There is a tech-
nique known as decoy selling or decoy positioning. With this in
mind, marketers offer a series of products (usually three) that feature
two attractive options and a third, clearly unattractive option. This
“ugly option” makes the others look better by comparison. For ex-
ample: a magazine was offered as a web-only option for $60 a year,
as a print-only option for $125 a year, and as a web-and-print op-
tion for $125 a year. The print-only option was clearly an inferior
alternative, so the marketers drove the customer to select one of the
other two options, both of which benefitted the marketer (most users
selected the web-and-print option, which, on its face, promised the
highest value).
Can lottery products be bundled—or, conversely, de-coupled—to
make them markedly more or less attractive than singly sold prod-
ucts? Can a sales option be made to appear more compelling because
the associated offerings are clearly inferior alternatives? Decoys can
enhance sales and drive players toward more profitable choices.
Zero Price Effect:
There is a critical difference in consumer per-
ceptions when the word FREE enters the equation, according to Dan
Airely, whose quotation provided the context for this article. Consumers
impart more intrinsic value to free things. For example, a free piece of
candy is disproportionately more attractive relative to a 14-cent piece
than a 1-cent piece is compared to a 15-cent piece. Once again, our
supposedly rational minds are going off the grid, and the word “free”
tripped the haywire. Marketers know that “Two for the price of one” is
not nearly as attractive as “Buy one, get one free.” In fact, BOGO (buy
one, get one) is so powerful, it has spawned its own vernacular.
Stories > Statistics:
Kahneman says that people generally make
accurate inferences when given purely statistical data. However, when
given statistics and a story that explains a situation, most people reso-
nate more with the story than the numbers. Lottery is an inherently
numbers-heavy business. It must continue to emphasize the human
interest stories that arise from winning players and from people who
have directly benefitted from the good causes that lottery supports.
We see Lotteries apply this principle all the time. Images or advertis-
ing that stimulate the imagination and cause us to dream about how our
life would change if we won the Lottery are leveraging the story behind
the numbers. A story hook is always preferable to sterile statistics.
Symbols:
In his book Drunk Tank Pink, Adam Alter discusses
the power of symbols to influence decision making, ignite fear or ha-
tred, evince feelings of charity, and altogether overwhelm our think-
ing. Symbols operate at a much higher velocity than verbal language.
In microseconds, people are able to recognize a symbol and process its
pre-determined meaning. Skull & crossbones and guns instantaneously
communicate negative attributes—fear, violence, divisiveness. Butter-
flies and sunbursts shout “happy times,” “unity,” and “peacefulness.
There are many implications for Lottery POS and signage. Hearts,
clover, bills and coins, the infinity symbol, and the peace symbol all
could incent consumers to purchase a lucky lottery ticket. Interest-
ingly, so might symbols that have been demonstrated to elicit feelings
of charity toward others, including pretty fish swimming in a school,
the yin-yang symbol, and two clasped hands. Symbols that indirectly
and subconsciously promote good causes might stimulate the sale of
lottery products even better than the more traditional crossed fingers,
smiling stars, and pots of gold.
Many state lottery logos depict rainbows, confetti, or suggestions
of their native locations (shape of the state, indigenous plants like
cactus or wheat, or fauna). Many do not literally depict money, per-
haps out of a desire not to appear avaricious. Behavioral economists
would suggest that forthright representations of money and/or im-
plicit images of good causes (charitable feelings) both are preferable
to state birds, dancing letter “L’s,” or abstract shapes.
Hedonic Treadmill:
This behavioral principle—also known as he-
donic adaptation—is the tendency of humans to return to stable levels
of happiness despite major positive or negative life events (like winning
a large cash prize). For example, as a person makes more money, her/his
expectations and desires increase as well, resulting in no net gain in hap-
piness. It is a straightforward calculus: Have more = want more.This dy-
namic could influence how Lottery sells the dream of winning. Rather