The certainty effect refers to the fact that people "prefer to reduce
chances of something bad happening from a fixed amount down to zero
than by the same amount but not to zero" (from
http://math.hunter.cuny.edu/~monnie/stat113-S02/lecture15b.htm ).
The certainty effect is important in insurance marketing, indeed,
http://www.stewarteconomics.com/Certainty%20Effect.pdf concludes: "the
loss of the certainty effect would be very expensive for insurers".
However, insurance is kind of boring, and marketing insurance more so,
so I will use the second option in your question.
The "availability heuristic" states "The easier it is to remember, or
to imagine, a type of event, the more likely it is that an event of
that type will occur". (From:
http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/volvofal.html , also see
http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/11/e11expand.html ).
This heuristic is really the cornerstone of a lot of marketing.
Here are a couple of instances.
I once got one of those "you may have already won a million dollars"
type promotions in the mail, asking me to subscribe to a bunch of
magazines for a chance to win money. One of the survey questions was
"how would I like the money"? As a single lump sum or over 20 years.
By forcing me to visualize how I would spend the winnings, the
prospect of winnings becomes more "available" and thus seemingly more
likely. This kind of choice is sometimes given in lotteries as well:
the consumer is asked to choose how he wants to spend the money before
he has it.
Another instance of lottery marketing using the availability heuristic
is when lottery ads portray in detail the results of winning, say,
$100,000,000 dollars; these images become more "available" to the
consumer and their probability is overestimated.
If you want an actual official net source, here is an excerpt from
http://www.prenhall.com/malhotra/mr3e/ex/ex24.pdf
"Marketers of earthquake insurance have increased sales by providing
consumers with vivid images of earthquakes in advertising" [page 1] |
