Digital Nudging - Decoy effect and Social Norms Nudge in E-commerce
Testing the effectiveness of the decoy effect and social norms nudge in the context of an e-commerce flower store
With the advent of the internet, people are making more decisions in digital environments such as websites or mobile applications. It has been shown that the ability of people to make rational decisions is bounded. Often heuristics and biases are utilized to reduce the cognitive burden that can be associated with decision making. Digital nudging has become a field of research in behavioral economics using interface design elements to nudge users towards a specific choice within a choice set. Digital nudging in an e-commerce setting can be used steer users towards a specific choice, however research into the effectiveness of digital nudges in the context of e-commerce is limited. This thesis aim to test the effectiveness of the decoy and social norms nudges in nudging users towards a more expensive option within a set of choices. Online experiments were conducted with an e-commerce florist shop. While the results for the decoy and social norms nudges provided inconclusive evidence regarding their effectiveness in nudging users towards more expensive option, the decoy nudge has shown to be more effective than the social norms nudge.
Die Arbeit wurde in den Churer Schriften publiziert.
Marlan Röthlisberger studiert Digital Business Management.