This link is only open access for a little while, so go look at it now.

Behavioral Economics in Marketing: 7 Insights to Lift Results

People who study the brain and decision-making often come to some very disturbing conclusions — for example, that we often make decisions un- or sub-consciously and later rationalize them. We wrap a story around our decision to justify it, but our story isn’t really why we made the decision.

The article linked above points out some ways marketers can use this phenomenon to sell products.

This raises the question whether it’s wise to use such tactics to sell subscription products. If all you’re after is one sale, it might make sense. But with a subscription, you’re relying on renewals, which means the person has to actually like the thing.

So a subscription marketer that uses tricky tactics might want to check to see if renewals for people who purchased from the tricky offer differ from renewals off the standard offer.