Goal Dilution Effect

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Keen listeners of Nudge will have heard Richard Shotton explain how Five Guys succeeded because they limited the number of items on their menu.

They focused on just burgers and chips.

That helped them improve and benefit from economies of scale.

But it also helped them psychologically, due to the goal dilution effect.

Here's why:

In a 2007 study by Zhang and Fishbach¹, participants were given information about how eating tomatoes could achieve certain goals.
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Some are told eating tomatoes achieved just one goal: "𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳"
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Others are told eating tomatoes achieves two goals: "𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘺𝘦."
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Zhang and Fishbach found that participants rated tomatoes as 12% more effective at preventing cancer when this was the only listed benefit, compared to when an additional health benefit was also included.

And I think Google knew this when they launched Chrome in 2009.

They called it, "The Fast Browser"

They didn't mention how passwords are synced, how security is best-in-class, or integrations with Gmail.
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They didn't mention the extensions, stability, or automatic updates.
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They could have done, but instead they focused on one benefit.
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𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒆𝒅.

Google and Five Guys benefit from the same bias.

They didn't attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades.

They focused on one benefit, and that focus boosted how believable their claims seemed.

Big thanks to today's sponsors, GWI.

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Have you seen another firm use goal dilution? Reply and let me know. — Phill​