Describe a time when you made a bad decision because you made one of the errors that Dan Gilbert discussed.

Dan Gilbert talked about our bad shopping decisions when he talked about an example of shopping at a wine shop. If you had to buy a bottle of wine, and you see them here for 8, 27 and 33 dollars, he said that most people don’t want the most expensive, they don’t want the least expensive. So, they will opt for the item in the middle. A smart retailer will put a very expensive item that nobody will ever buy on the shelf because suddenly the $33 wine doesn’t look as expensive in comparison.

Just like the example, I bought wireless earphones in a shop and naturally chose the one that is relatively cheaper and not the cheapest. In the same shop, there were a few luxurious wireless earphones that were very expensive which made the earphone I was considering buying cheap. If that earphone was sold at the same price but in a more expensive shop, I wouldn’t have considered buying it because it will be the cheapest one. If the same earphone was sold in a much cheaper shop, I would naturally think that it is expensive and I would not buy it. We unconsciously select the middle/cheaper product and this is a ‘bad decision’ because we are comparing the prices of other products, rather than looking at the prices and the qualities of the product independently.

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