The Blemishing Effect
14 min Read
We may be inclined to exclusively discuss the benefits of the choice we believe others should select while attempting to persuade them to do so. However, the Blemishing Effect suggests pointing out the reasons they shouldn’t really be to our benefit.
Rarely does a purchase have no drawbacks. Even if a product is exactly what a consumer wants, it nonetheless could have one or more features that fall short of those of competitors’ products. How awful is it that your clients are weighing the disadvantages of your products alongside their advantages?
What is the blemishing effect?
“The Blemishing Effect” is the idea that making a product appears to have a small flaw makes consumers more attracted to it.
The Blemishing Effect is just one of the natural biases that influence human decision-making and aren’t always sensible. Our brain has many “shortcuts” that enable us to make quick decisions since on an ordinary day we make hundreds of decisions, from choosing the best moment to cross the road to deciding what to eat for lunch to your hasty business decisions. It works brilliantly in some areas of our lives; for instance, you don’t need to weigh the length of a road, the speed of approaching cars, your walking speed, and other factors in order to decide whether to cross it or not; you can simply look both ways and cross the street. But there are some other areas of our lives where we make less logical choices, particularly when it comes to how we behave as consumers. They are predictable, which is a good thing.
When the negative information is really slight, you won’t be able to take advantage of the beneficial consequence. It can actually harm you if it is too strong. A little criticism of the particular product will typically be helpful while making smaller purchases as opposed to huge, pricey ones. The Blemishing Effect does have some restrictions, though. Customers can’t become overly invested in their purchase, positivity must come before negativity, and positivity must dominate negativity in order for it to succeed.

The ideal circumstances
First of all, it works best when individuals don’t want to exert a lot of effort before making a decision. This is referred to as “low-effort processing” by researchers and occurs when people are otherwise occupied or distracted. The blemishing effect was less noticeable the harder it was for decision-makers to make a choice.
Second, the negative information must follow the good information, not vice versa. When digesting information with little effort, the positives that arrive first remain in our memories the most, and the negative that comes last actually looks less horrible in comparison to all the positives that came before it.
Conclusion
Always start with a few compelling advantages before noting the disadvantages when listing pros and drawbacks. Customers will start recommending your goods to one another as a result.
Include a minor drawback if you have a product that won’t require buyers to think too deeply about it in order to support their good opinions about it.

Get more customers, increase your sales, and attract clients who pay premium price.