The Business of Choice: Marketing to Consumers’ Instincts

11. Never Be Above Comparison

People use comparisons as an intuitive form of navigation, and relativity can drive choices.

Sweden’s Stockholm is a city awash with museums. One of the world’s finest museums—the impressive Vasa Museet—houses the preserved wreck of the Vasa, a 226-foot warship that sank less than a mile into her maiden voyage in 1628. The building itself is difficult to miss once you are in its vicinity—a stunning piece of modern architecture topped by a large copper roof with three stylized masts that represent the actual height of the ship. But one museum you might easily overlook, as I certainly would have if I hadn’t taken cover at the front door to avoid a summer downpour, is the much less dramatic Royal Coin Cabinet. Tucked ...