Have you ever heard of anchoring? Probably not but it has played a role in the way you understand and do things. And it is important in marketing your practice.

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor. For example, the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth.

https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/the-drawbacks-of-goals/

Let’s sum this up by saying that anchoring is the tendency to give too much weight to the first number or thing heard when making decisions. Our minds are biased by first impressions and we use this as a reference point for everything else.

Examples:

• If you first see a T-shirt that costs $1,200 – then see a second one that costs $100 – you’re prone to see the second shirt as cheap.
• We also have restaurants employing anchoring techniques. For instance, New York based restaurant Serendipity 3, introduced the “haute dog”, costing $69 and making it the most expensive in the world. This is designed to be the anchor. When the customer comes in and sees a $69 hotdog, a $17.95 hamburger and fries seem cheap.
• You see a stock for $5 and buy 1,000 of them. However, after a few months, the price falls to $4.50. ‘Those are worth $5, so I’ll keep hold of them’ you tell yourself. Yet the price continues to fall down to $3. Nevertheless, you may still believe they are worth $5 (the anchor value), despite the companies continued poor performance.

How can this be used in Direct Primary Care? One way would be to start by mentioning the cost of Concierge Medicine memberships. This sets the anchor. This could be a Facebook post. Then explain your rate for doing the same level of service and care and it will seem ridiculously reasonable.

Another example is to mention the cost of a procedure. Let’s say a vasectomy. Getting the word out that it costs $2200 (I am making that up) but only $300 for members make get patients to jump to join.

Make sense?

Does anyone have any other examples?