TEAM ASSIGNMENT
Startup Psychology
Minor Entrepreneurship
Startup Psychology
Group 1
Ten Biases / Heuristics / Persuasions
Kai Becker
Word count: max 2365
23-12-2017
Floor Jacobs Kosta Hinzen Maarten Schram Baran Erdogan
11050764 10760415 10754784 11008008
, Ten Biases/Heuristics/Persuasions
Availability heuristic
As our business and what we do is sometimes hard to understand for an outsider, it has proven
far more effective to provide examples of similar models and companies that provide a
service comparable to ours. What we have noticed, is that if we compare our service to certain
“big players” on the market, for example Airbnb or Marktplaats, people are far more likely to
understand and support our concept. This basically means that if one can immediately think of
similar existing examples, they will be far more likely to perceive our concept in a positive
way (Benson, 2016).
Prominence of content persuasion
Using the prominence of content is one of the persuasion techniques we can apply to
FirstFloor (our business). On our website the most important action is to let potential
customers start with using our service. We have built a “Get Started” button in the right
corner of our website. This button is marked with a light neon color. This way it will strike
the visitors attention on our website (Rouke, 2014). To use an outstanding color we attract our
visitors eyes to this button.
Negativity bias
With our business concept, we break down two barriers for our clients: time and
money. Because this is one of our selling points, we advocate this to a large extent during our
pitches and on our website. By doing so, we make it abundantly clear to our clients that if
they would not choose us, they would face the two problems of high prices and a long time
before their launch. This bias means that focusing on a negative aspect has greater
consequences for decision making than focusing on a positive one (Benson, 2016).
Social Proof Persuasion
Social proof is the phenomena where people tend to believe that the decision and actions of
others reflect the correct behavior in a given situation (Charlton, 2013). In this paper we will
use two types of Social Proof persuasion. The first one is to show potential customers what
existing customers think of our service. So, in our case, we proof with numbers that an X
amount of customers is happy with our service. This will persuade potential customers to
believe in the credibility of our service. The second one is to show potential customers our
best, already built, platforms. Like this, we give potential customers examples of already
2
Startup Psychology
Minor Entrepreneurship
Startup Psychology
Group 1
Ten Biases / Heuristics / Persuasions
Kai Becker
Word count: max 2365
23-12-2017
Floor Jacobs Kosta Hinzen Maarten Schram Baran Erdogan
11050764 10760415 10754784 11008008
, Ten Biases/Heuristics/Persuasions
Availability heuristic
As our business and what we do is sometimes hard to understand for an outsider, it has proven
far more effective to provide examples of similar models and companies that provide a
service comparable to ours. What we have noticed, is that if we compare our service to certain
“big players” on the market, for example Airbnb or Marktplaats, people are far more likely to
understand and support our concept. This basically means that if one can immediately think of
similar existing examples, they will be far more likely to perceive our concept in a positive
way (Benson, 2016).
Prominence of content persuasion
Using the prominence of content is one of the persuasion techniques we can apply to
FirstFloor (our business). On our website the most important action is to let potential
customers start with using our service. We have built a “Get Started” button in the right
corner of our website. This button is marked with a light neon color. This way it will strike
the visitors attention on our website (Rouke, 2014). To use an outstanding color we attract our
visitors eyes to this button.
Negativity bias
With our business concept, we break down two barriers for our clients: time and
money. Because this is one of our selling points, we advocate this to a large extent during our
pitches and on our website. By doing so, we make it abundantly clear to our clients that if
they would not choose us, they would face the two problems of high prices and a long time
before their launch. This bias means that focusing on a negative aspect has greater
consequences for decision making than focusing on a positive one (Benson, 2016).
Social Proof Persuasion
Social proof is the phenomena where people tend to believe that the decision and actions of
others reflect the correct behavior in a given situation (Charlton, 2013). In this paper we will
use two types of Social Proof persuasion. The first one is to show potential customers what
existing customers think of our service. So, in our case, we proof with numbers that an X
amount of customers is happy with our service. This will persuade potential customers to
believe in the credibility of our service. The second one is to show potential customers our
best, already built, platforms. Like this, we give potential customers examples of already
2
