Understanding the poppadom effect
Who loves poppadoms? I know I do. Crunchy savoury appetisers are my favourites.
You know who else loves poppadums? (Or olives or prawn crackers or bread baskets or whatever…)
Restaurants. You know why?
Because they cost almost nothing compared to the sale price and almost everyone orders them, even customers who intended not to.
In fact, we quite often order little extras we hadn’t meant to buy. Going to the till with a new sweater we see some earrings that would go with it and think we might as well have them. We get a screen protector to go with our new phone. We buy the upgrade, the insurance, the add-on.
Why?
The poppadum effect.
Once you’re already paying for a whole meal, the cost of poppadoms seems trivial in comparison, so why not? The poppadum effect is a type of mental accounting; a way our brains trick us into making unwise decisions by using a cognitive shortcut that doesn’t take us where we really need it to go.
Once you’re committed to purchasing a new tablet (say), adding the cost of a case seems negligible. Shops know this and they play on it. Salespeople are trained to offer the extras after you’ve decided to buy and there are always tempting small items at the till.
The truth is these little extras are often the poorest value for money in the store and if we were thinking clearly, we wouldn’t have bought them at all, but in the moment of purchase we’ve already overcome the resistance to spending and the part of us that always wants more can take its chance and add to basket.
Being aware that this is a common phenomenon can help you make better decisions. I, for example, will always want poppadums, but only one, thank you.
Take a minute when a shop offers you an extra or an add-on and remember you almost certainly don’t need to make a decision about it straight away. Say you’ll think it over, because nine times out of ten you can come back for it. You might even get a discount.
I did a podcast episode on our weird irrational responses to prices. You can listen here.