Present Bias design pattern

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Problem summary

What we want now is not what we aspire to in the future

Usage

Use to boost sales by exploiting our bias toward instant gratification over future rewards
Use to separate users present-self from their future-self to help them in making healthier long-term choices.

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Solution

Facilitate future lock-in. Help users make healthier long-term choices and secure the best long-term consequences of their decisions by segregating making a decision from receiving the consequences. Encourage customers to order groceries several days in advance to separate their present self from their future self and in turn reduce impulse purchases.
Optimize sales for the near-future. It is more likely that customers will spend more money in the near future than in the more distant future.
Boost impulse sales. Using the Present Bias to boost sales, you could adapt product recommendations to include impulse purchases through time-restricted special offers.

Rationale

Our short-term desires (wants) and longer intentions (should) differ wildly. We tend to focus on and over-value immediate rewards at the expense of long-term wishes and benefits. Allow customers to perform “future lock-in” to help them make healthier “should” choices rather than caving in to here-and-now “wants”.

Sources

People are biased towards the present as the perceived value of receiving a reward in the immediate future falls rapidly and only less more looking to the distant future. This model of how the value of a reward is discounted over time is called Hyperbolic discounting and is a form of Delay Discounting, which are cornerstones of behavioral economics.

¹ Milkman, Rogers & Bazerman (2010). Ice cream soon and vegetables later: A study of online grocery purchases and order lead time. Marketing Letters 21(1):17-35

² Balakrishnan, Haushofer & Jakiela (2017). How Soon Is Now? Evidence of Present Bias from Convex Time Budget Experiments. Cambridge, MA.

³ Present Bias at Wikipedia.org

⁴ Dynamic inconsistency at Wikipedia.rg

⁵ Present Bias at Coglode.com

⁶ What Goes Around Comes Around: Behavioral “Lock In,” and How to Crack It to Save the Planet by Toby Park

⁷ The Present Bias at Learning Loop