Why do people treat buying an app with the same amount of deliberation as buying a new car? The price is less than a large coffee at Dunkin Donuts.
I don't mean to be picking on you quintendf because I do exactly the same thing and your comment made me realize it. I am going to download the app just because of your arguement - I am going to need it sometime in the next few months and not remember the name.
There must be some cognitive bias about buying an app. I will blow $2 on a Diet Coke when I fill-up with gas with barely a second thought. But ask me to download a $2 app - Whoa! this is going to take some thought, research...
If most apps were $5 and $10 instead of free and $.99, you would probably buy the $5 apps and wish the $10 were $5. For better or worse, people expect mobile apps to be <$1 or free.
I ended up buying the app for this reason. However, in the past few months, I have also been exploring clutter, tooling, and minimizing the things in my space.
I'm moving from the East Coast to the West Coast. I'm planning on taking one car load worth of possessions. The rest, I am giving away or trashing.
In this month-long process, I have discovered that:
(1) It is emotionally draining to sort through my possessions and let them exit my personal space.
(2) Among the most common, recurring pattern of emotion/rationalization is that of fear and "I may need this in the future." Looking at it clearly, though, many of those things I bought in which I "might" need, I have never actually used. They end up being security blankets.
(3) Once it is out, this appears to free up a great deal of mental space. I've been finding things easier to get things done and try new things.
(4) This leads to more deliberation and mindfulness on the new things coming into my space.
(5) Apps are no different. There is a certain ruthlessness in deleting the apps you have purchased and the data it stores after it no longer serves.
So it isn't so much, why would you not buy a $2 app when you are willing to blow $2 on a Diet Coke. It's more that, why wasn't the $2 Diet Coke you are shoving into your body given as much due deliberation?
Quintendf wasn't necessarily saying that apps shouldn't cost money. He/she was asking why this one, considering the obvious stream of revenue that it will bring? And why even ask why? The bar has already been set for apps to be mostly free or just 99 cents. It's a basic part of human psychology to be affected by an "anchor price", regardless of rationality.
anchor price, i.e. a suggested price, which in this case is the perceived status quo of free or 99 cents. In a famous experiment, students were told to spin a roulette wheel and then make an estimate about some world fact. Even though the roulette wheel obviously* had nothing to do with the question, students who got a higher number from the roulette spin on average made higher estimates.
Agreed- there definitely seems to be some kind of mental hurdle people have about those $2 purchases. Like you, I'll probably end up purchasing it now that I've thought about it logically and because gregcohn took the time to respond to my post.
That said, my comment was more focused on the business decision of making an app like this paid. If you could effectively A/B test this kind of scenario, I wonder which approach would actually lead to more long term revenue.
Initial extreme profitability of platform and its relative openness to developers spurred massive competition. The newness (e.g. PS2 Games on release vs 5 years later) no doubt contributed to a bias towards competition by price instead of differentiation.
Now prices are anchored near $1 for the most part.
I don't mean to be picking on you quintendf because I do exactly the same thing and your comment made me realize it. I am going to download the app just because of your arguement - I am going to need it sometime in the next few months and not remember the name.
There must be some cognitive bias about buying an app. I will blow $2 on a Diet Coke when I fill-up with gas with barely a second thought. But ask me to download a $2 app - Whoa! this is going to take some thought, research...