Cheap versus Free

I recently read the book "Free" by Chris Anderson the author of The Long Tail.  It is a good read and really makes you think.  I don't agree with everything he says nor do others, but the one point he makes that really made an impression on me is the huge difference between cheap and free.  One example he gives is an experiment that is done by Dan Ariely the author of "Predictably Irrational".  They placed a table at a university where they were advertising chocolates.    They had Lindor Truffles for 15 cents (a high end chocolate which typically sells for much more), and Hersey Kiss's for 1 cent.  73 percent chose the Lindor Truffle over the Hersey Kiss.  They then decided to lower the price of each candy by one cent.  The Truffle was now 14 cents and the Kiss was 0 cents.  69 percent chose the Kiss.  What Ariely came to understand through this experiment and others is that the brain is constantly deciding how to allocate resources.  When faced with a choice where resources don't have to be allocated (i.e it is free) the brain is relieved from having to do work.

How does this affect your market?  This is not just true for free goods, but also free services.  If there is no charge for deliveries or no penalty to ask for a faster turn around I will choose whatever I want because I don't have to allocate any resources.  This is not a new thought of mine.  This was actually in my first post on this blog.  Chris Anderson and Dan Airely just did a better job of explaining it.  More on this later...