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Suazanne Lucas makes short work of explaining why free is quite often the wrong price for a promotional campaign, not to mention many other things:
I can only imagine having to deal with the deluge of people who'd take the items for free. That hassle is what the charity is relieving us of, and is quite an acceptable payment for getting the old furniture off our hands.
-- CAV
The Mets made a nice gesture to compensate for the schedule change, but it didn't benefit the right people. The right people are the ones who want to come. Because the free tickets were quickly claimed, we can assume that many people would have liked to attend but couldn't because those who didn't value the tickets snapped them up, just in case.The Facebook Marketplace example is interesting. My wife and I were considering selling off some old furniture recently, after having found nicer pieces for not much on a similar platform -- but we decided to donate instead because the price we'd likely fetch wouldn't justify the hassle of having to store the items at home and deal with the logistics of talking to potential buyers and then arranging to have the furniture moved.
This isn't unique to baseball games. I provide online training to HR professionals. When it's free, I can count on a 50 percent attendance rate. When people have to pay to attend, the attendance rate is 90 percent or higher.
The same goes for selling stuff on Facebook Marketplace. If I post something for free, I'll get numerous responses, and some people will go so far as to set a time to come pick up the object, only to no-show.
What you always want in transactions is a little bit of "friction" to attract the people who are truly interested in whatever you have to sell. Even if that thing is a job. [bold added]
I can only imagine having to deal with the deluge of people who'd take the items for free. That hassle is what the charity is relieving us of, and is quite an acceptable payment for getting the old furniture off our hands.
-- CAV
