Friday Research: The Power of Lists Or How Do Rankings Influence Evaluation?

When Will You Use This?  

Developing ranked lists to increase sales as well as managing your own presence on Top Lists.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

People love lists and there is an ever-present Top 10 List for just about everything.

Given the influence of ranked lists on both the consumers and producers, it is important to understand how people use the information provided on these lists in their decision making.

Current series of experiments* examines the “top 10 effect,” the power of round numbers, and how our perceptions can be manipulated. Researchers demonstrate the existence of a cognitive bias in the interpretation of ranked lists: there is an observed significant importance of round numbers (end with a 0 or 5, such as 25, 50, 100). This research shows that round-number categories (e.g., top 10, top 25), rather than place-value categories (e.g., single digits, the twenties) guide the interpretation and value of ranked lists.

Moreover, researchers observe that despite the fact that ranked lists are already explicitly ordered and highly structured, consumers still mentally subdivide them into a smaller set of subjectively generated categories.

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks  

 

It’s obvious that people find ranked lists informative and influential. Consumers often choose goods and services based on a product’s inclusion in a ranked list (just think Billboards music charts, Time 100, Forbes lists, etc).

If your company is a subject to third-party ranked lists, it’s important to have a few things in mind:

• if you are just on the outside looking in to a round-number category, invest more actively and devote significant resources to improve your rank (the ones who should be more worried are those ranked 11th in a top 15 list, or 26th in a top 25 list, etc).

• aim for a round-number category to make sharp numbers prominent and reduce consumers’ tendencies to see your products as second-rate.


*Mathew S. Isaac and Robert M. Schindler. “The Top-Ten Effect: Consumers’ Subjective Categorization of Ranked Lists.” Journal of Consumer Research: April 2014.{Thanks for the material}
 
P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with rankings and evaluations, how do they help to sell? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.