Economia Clientes

Imagine you go to a store to buy a shirt, which sells for
$100. At the store, you learn the same shirt is on sale for $75
at a branch five blocks away. Do you go to the other branch to
get the lower price?
Now imagine that you've bought a ticket to a play. At the
theater you realize you've lost your ticket, which cost $150.
Do you spend another $150 to see the play?
What do shirts andplays have to do with banking? Quite
a lot, as it happens. Both of these scenarios come from
research in a science called behavioral economics. Pioneered
in the 1960s by a pair of Israeli psychologists, Daniel
Kahneman and Amos Tversky, behavioral economics
combines psychology and economics to explain how people
make decisions about money. Specifically, behavioral
economics asks whypeople--even those with expertise and
experience--make financial choices that are inconsistent,
irrational and often costly. It asks, in other words, "Why do
smart people make big money mistakes?"
Approaching an answer to that question is crucial for
bankers who hope to thrive in the twenty-first century. Today's
bank customers are confronted with an increasingly complex
array of financial servicesand products. By learning how
consumers make financial decisions, bankers can go a long
way toward meeting depositors' needs and keeping them as
customers. This article explores seven of the most common
mental money mistakes and, in the box on page 24, offers six
ways bankers can put this information to practical, and
profitable, use.
These examples may sound familiar, but bear with me.Imagine you go to a store to buy a suit, which sells for
$500. At the store, you learn the same suit is on sale for $475
at a branch five blocks away. Would you go to the other
branch to get the lower price?
Now imagine you're going to a play, but you haven't
bought your ticket, which costs $150. At the theater you
realize you've lost $150 cash. You still have enough money to
buy your ticket.Do you?
Compare these scenarios with those at the top of this
article. Studies in behavioral economics tell us that more
people will go to the other branch of the store to save on the
shirt than would go to save on the suit. It is odd, because both
scenarios offer the same choice: Walk five blocks to save $25.
By the same token, research suggests that most people would
not buy another ticketto the play if they had lost a previously
purchased ticket, but would if they had lost $150 in cash.
Here, too, both scenarios offer the same outcome: total out-ofpocket
cost of $300 for a product valued at $150.
This variance in response reflects one of the most
common, and costly, concepts of behavioral economics:
mental accounting. In essence, this is the tendency to value
some dollarsless than others based on where the money
comes from (salary vs. bonus, for example), how it is to be
spent (down payment vs. vacation) or the size of the
transaction. In our example, $25 is thought significant when
it's part of a $100 transaction, but insignificant when part of a
larger purchase. Similarly, for most people the first ticket
scenario equals a total play cost of $300, i.e.,two tickets at
$150 each. But most people separate $150 in lost cash and the
$150 ticket into two independent accounts. Those still unsure
about the effects of mental accounting need only answer the
following question: Which are you more likely to spend,
$1,000 from a savings account or a $1,000 tax refund? That
most people have answer to that question at all is the best
proof of the effectsof mental accounting.
Mistake Mental Accounting
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved.
America’s Community Banker October 1999 24
Imagine you've been given $1,000 and asked to choose
between two options. With Option A, you are guaranteed to
win an additional $500. With Option B, you get the chance to
flip a coin. If it's heads, you receive another $1,000; tails, you
get nothing. Which...