roy

The marketers are Barnes and Noble are geniuses. Although there is a Borders not more than 3 minutes from my house, they've successfully gotten me to drive an additional 3-4 minutes to work at Barnes, although Borders has power outlets for laptops. And what's worst, is I'm paying them to do this.

It all started with that cute Barnes employee asking me if I wanted to pay only $20 to become a Barnes member; the perks are I get 10% off all future purchases! Knowing that I'd have to come back to buy some SAT books, I paid for it. Then whenever I read a book review online, I'd go to Barnes and buy it, since I got 10% off (nevermind that it'd probably have been easier to get it from Amazon if I paid for Amazon Prime). Then one day, I decided to go work at Barnes since they advertised their high speed wireless (which is not free, bastards!) and I could get 10% off my drink. Upon getting there, I realized that the internet is not free... being stubborn, I paid $3.95 for a two hour pass. The second time I came, I somehow justified paying for a year-long access ($20/month).

If I had known Borders offered roughly the same price but also let me plug in, I might have taken their offer. But because I was too busy getting 10% off ... I didn't know.

So the lesson here? Make people pay some marginal amount to become attached. Cognitive dissonance is powerful, people.