SSS 2012-04-25

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

 

Music, film and video game makes face a new online, digital world. And some are testing a revolutionary pricing system: "pay what you want." But a new study finds that when consumers can name their own price, many may opt¹ out of buying at all. The study is in the Proceedings² of the National Academy³ of Sciences. 

 

For the research, tour boat passengers posed⁴ for photos. Each boat ride announced a price of $15 per picture. But they then charged either $15, $5 or the option to pay what you want.

 

As expected, the fewest tourists purchased photos when they had to pay full price. But more customers bought photos when they cost $5 than when prices were pay what you want—which could have saved passengers even more.

 

The researchers suggest that choosing to pay less than an announced lower-than-expected price made people feel cheap. With choices then limited to spending more money or feeling like a tightwad, potential customers simply opted⁵ out of the purchase. So on sea or land, a low, set price may catch the most fish.

 

Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American 60 Second Science, I am Sophie Bushwick

分享到：