How Booking.com "breaks" users through cognitive distortions

When was the last time you searched for a home on Booking.com? Remember your feelings. Did you feel stressed? If so, you are trapped in cognitive psychological traps.

Since the emergence of behavioral economics in the 1970s, its business has been of great interest to businesses. Not surprisingly: Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues, for the first time, examined not a laboratory man with sterile rational economic behavior, but a living one, with all the inherent errors of perception and subjectivity.

Cognitive distortions are systematic deviations in behavior, perception and thinking that are caused by the evolutionary features of the brain, designed to simplify and automate decision making, conserve energy, and increase efficiency.

Now cognitive distortions are actively exploited in marketing, design, service and product design.

Let's look at how this works on the example of Booking.com.

Booking.com, with all its imaginary interface redundancy, perfectly exploits basic behavioral triggers. Booking.com designers, unlike Airbnb, project not pretty interfaces, buttons, and animations. They project emotions: fear, greed and a sense of social belonging.

The Internet giant's belief machine is based on four basic behavioral incentives:

1. Feeling of fear.

2. Feeling greedy.

3. The effect of social approval.

4. Fear of loss.

Feelings of fear and the effect of scarcity

Negative emotions, in particular fear, have the greatest power and induce almost instantaneous and often meaningless actions designed to suppress negative and uncomfortable feelings.

When you searched for a hotel on the site, you might notice that the top of the service shows the options in which the rooms have already ended.

Why? To create a deficit effect and put you in an uncomfortable state. Thus pushing you to book.

Booking.com does not simply exploit the fear that many do. Booking.com deliberately projects an environment of fear, bombarding you with dozens of incentives per session.

The goal is to disable rational decision-making mechanisms and incorporate evolutionary beat-and-run reactions.

Some more formulations to heighten your sense of dread:

"Three users are currently viewing the page."

Last Booking: 5 hours ago.

"City N is a very popular destination for selected dates (88% of accommodation is reserved)."

"Good luck to you - there are usually no seats here!"

But fear is not the only element in Booking.com's conviction formula.

Feeling greedy

When you are finally immersed in an anxious state, it is time for positive reinforcement.

Free room category upgrade

More options:

«Book your accommodation in N and get a 15% discount on any car rental.

"Your Genius Benefits: 15% off."

The effect of social approval

When people are unable to make a choice or make a choice, they prefer to focus on other people, assuming that others are more familiar with the situation.

"A good option for couples is they have rated the convenience of traveling for two at 9.1."

"This option met or exceeded the expectations of 97% of the guests who left the review."

"Sales Hit in Naples!".

Fear of loss

Mix of feelings of fear and sense of greed. People tend to avoid losses more often than focus on the potential benefits.

«Free cancellation. Without prepayment. "

"You can make a reservation without a credit card."

Висновки

The next time you go on vacation and are anxious to find accommodation on booking sites, remember that your emotions are driven by service designers who passionately want to slip through the strict customs of your rationality into the area of automatic semi-conscious reactions.

Source link:  https://vc.ru/marketing/89272-kak-booking-com-vzlamyvaet-polzovateley-ispolzuya-kognitivnye-iskazheniya