Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills @thomhills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Ryanair gets customers to buy travel insurance!


This is a snapshot of Ryanair's website. Ryanair is an Irish low-cost airline which went public in 1997 and since then their revenue has seen a big increase. However, it seems as though Ryanair uses sneaky tactics on their website to get customers to pay for 'extra add-ons' without them realising

Ryanair have managed to get more customers to buy travel insurance. This is due to the choice architecture on Ryanair’s website. Choice architecture is the way in which the choices we make are influenced by the way in which the choice is designed and presented (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). From the picture above we can see that under ‘buy travel insurance’ is a drop-down box where the default option ‘please select a country of residence’ opts in customers for travel insurance. To opt out customers have to scroll through the list of countries and select ‘no travel insurance required’. The use of a default option has a sizeable impact on what is chosen (Johnson, Steffel, & Goldstein, 2005). In this case, customers may easily not notice that they have the option to opt out and not buy travel insurance. Most customers will automatically click on the drop down box and select their country of residence therefore acquiring extra costs that they might not need. This is very clever/ (sneaky) of Ryanair and different from other opt in techniques that I have seen as most of them involve checking or unchecking boxes. Therefore, the default option on the website enables Ryanair to get a specific outcome from customers, which is to buy their travel insurance. 

Research supports the effectiveness of default options in altering the decisions people make.  Johnson, Steffel and Goldstein (2005) asked 161 respondents whether they would be donors using one of three default conditions: an opt in condition where the default was not to be a donor, an opt out condition where the default was to be a donor and the neutral condition with no prior default. The results revealed donation rates being about twice as high when opting out as when opting in. Hence showing the default had a dramatic impact on the respondents’ decisions. The researchers then went on to analyse the rate of agreement to become a donor across the European countries with different defaults (opt-in for organ donation and opt-out). The results showed (Figure 1) that the four opt-in countries (on the left) had lower consent rates than the six opt-out countries (on the right) and nearly 60 percentage points separating the two groups. This shows that default options affect the choices we make and most importantly that opt-in techniques are effective tools in getting people to pick a certain option. This a tool that many companies like Ryanair can use in order to manipulate and control the choices their customers make. 



Figure 1: Effective consent rates by country

References



8 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing valuable information. Nice post. I enjoyed reading this post. The whole blog is very nice found some good stuff and good information here Thanks..Also visit my page  Travel medical insurance Protect Travel is a travel insurance company. Get your Travel Insurance with Protect Travel and Never leave your home without a Travel Insurance, get yourself Insured Now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Visa Comm is ideal if you are planning a trip that involves visits to or stopovers at many cities and not necessarily in a sequence.Find a great deal from Luxury Hotels to Budget Accommodations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. On the off chance that you are heading out starting with one spot then onto the next for work, excursion studies or business, you need travel insurance. You can get online travel insurance from India based insurance policy suppliers or approach correlation destinations. There are a few advantages of having travel insurance. One of the greatest profits is that in a few events, you may require restorative help while you are outside India. It is frequently hard to meet the restorative costs, however with abroad travel insurance strategy, you can go anyplace in the nation you have gone to and the insurance policy is legitimate for. Online travel insurance in India has been massively promoted because of the profits it gives.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Quest with a vacation spot is always supposed to become packed with journey along with enjoyable. But the practical knowledge is usually satisfying, not until is covered by insurance. Reassurance is very crucial that you totally like a trip and yes it arrives if your particular person is aware they are included in a very program that can provide your pet correct support in case of any type of crisis. Investing in a travel insurance plan can be a beneficial along with authentic proceed. Besides bestowing you stability, this plan program furthermore trigger on the client wonderful duty positive aspects. Hence it truly is crucial to pick any include right after a thorough study along with evaluate insurance Agents with a number of solutions on the market.

    ReplyDelete
  7. For many individuals, the worst type of issue that may get lucky and these on holiday is usually a had missed journey, some sort of stolen billfold, acquiring ill or using a small crash. Remedies been recently sensible in addition to purchased a few affordable
    Trucking Insurance, you'll likely always be coated intended for most of these prevalent trip accidents. But in a few nations, travellers experience the risk connected with considerably more considerable disruptions for their holidays.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.