Behaviorial economics in action on me

I paid $30 for this jpeg

The other week, I decided a nice, silly-fun Christmas gift to my girlfriend would be to buy a picture of us with a mall Santa. The idea came to me when I was at the mall and saw the price for a pair of 5×7 photos was $8, plus 50 cents tax. A lot, considering it’s a picture with some guy in some puffy red and white clothing, but life costs money, and what’s a Lincoln, three Washingtons, and a couple quarters in exchange for an image of a millisecond that will trigger nostalgia years from now?

So we get to the mall, and minimum package jumped to $17, including a $10 giftcard from Shutterfly. Bummer. But we were there, it’s fun to do it, and I figured why not? I decided to spend the extra Hamilton. Then I took a greater look at the packages. The next best package was for a a larger photo for $25 with a $10 giftcard from Shutterfly. The next one up was … $30 for a “high quality” photo on a CD and a $20 Shutterfly giftcard.

I’m not sure what this says about my personality, but I’ve always had a hard time spending money. I find the point of transaction subtly painful, actually. A lot of people have no problem the during the moment of swiping their credit cards, but later feel a horrible hangover after realizing they spent too much money. I’m the reverse. I always over-research my purchases, and more often that not, once that initial pain of spending subsides, I’m happy with what I get in return. More painful, and more lingering, is the pain of buying something that looks ugly, doesn’t work, or is a minimally wise purchase—then having to either look at the damn thing forever or know that I wasted money before getting a replacement.

So it was with the Santa photo: I was bummed to spend the extra money, but I decided to accept the financial hit. Memories, right? And since my wallet and brain were about to take a hit, and I figured it I might as well spend the extra money. The second Hamilton was painful, but not as painful as the first extra Hamilton. And I figured it would be nice to have a nice JPEG file and not worry about the low-quality scan. And maybe I can sell the $20 giftcard or even use it.

So I upgraded my purchase price to $30, all the way from $8.

Now that the money is spent, now that I have the photo in my email account forever (or until Google changes their Gmail terms of service or something weird happens like a jerk breaking into my account), and now that I have the printout of the photo on the wall, I’m glad I paid for it. But the truth is, had I known from the beginning that I would spend $30 plus tax plus gas money to reach the mall, I wouldn’t have done it.

That’s how behavioral economics works. The sellers understand the mind tricks to pull in consumers: Attract them with lower prices. Once there, they want to spend money on value. When it comes to memories and sentimentality, we people are not very rational. Yup, it worked on me.