It might be good to also test whether people are still influenced even if they consciously believe the counters are faked. Many of our intuitive heuristics still influence us even if we are aware of the bias. For example, I still click on some click bait headlines even though I totally recognize the deliberate, manipulative “curiosity gap” phrasing.
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“Now, you. You I like”
– Wish I could remember where that particular soundboard effect comes from, but I really like where you’re going with it.
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Well, I’ve definitely seen fake “For a Limited Time Only! This deal ends in ##:##:## hours!!!” countdown timers, timers that re-started when I visited the link in a different browser with different cookies.
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I don’t see them. Ublock Origin’s cosmetic filtering seems to strip it out.
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I’ve worked i stores where the sale that ends on the 4th just happens to be followed by another sale on the same item for the same amount starting the 5th. And a other sale that was “going out of business” for at least the two years I worked there. These are important things to remember when shopping. And if you see a particular item is on sale a lot, then it’s probably not even worth the sale price, let alone full retail.
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I should have known better than to believe that mutant superheroes were looking at the same product as me.
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I’m honestly shocked.
“widely faked” carries at least the implication that some of them are telling the truth and based on at least roughly accurate information. That, I was not expecting.
I assume those are fake too, but to be fair I have, in fact, had instances of seeing those messages, and then have the thing be out of stock by the time I place my order.
Also, you can easily have prices be a few cents or a dollar apart for seats and still claim the same thing, making it true but meaningless anyway.
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There probably are site packages that do that honestly, and it looks neat in the demos, but then in production they find out that it doesn’t scale very well. (DB thrashing, page caches constantly being updated…)
I’ve seen both of these, in combination with a constant feed of ‘sales’ messages along the lines of “Anonymous just bough a hat!” or whatever.
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I’m also a bit suspicious of the live stats on “Pay what you want!” bundles I’ve seen, especially the “average” amount paid for the bait and switch Stack Social pay what you want bundles where you actually have to pay above the alleged “average” to get the full bundle. Given that stack social routinely and outrageously lies about the “original” pricing and the percentage off discount, there is no reason for me to think they wouldn’t also lie about the stats for the pay what you want bundles.
I’ve not bought one of these bundles from Stack Social, but the ones I’ve bought from Humble Bundle at the very least have always been a reasonable price for the “average”.
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The credibility of the source does make a significant difference.
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