Brevistay Prank – The Curious Case of Discounts, Fools and Privacy
The internet boom in India quickly turned millennials in India into cyber beings in a very short span of time. The pandemic further turbo-charged this phenomenon and today every generation in the country trusts the internet platforms with their healthcare, finance, education, travel and grocery needs. It is actually quite a task to figure out which products and services are not available on the internet today in India.
These internet platforms enable some or the other form of e-commerce, and these internet companies were quick to identify that the Indian consumer is price sensitive and always ready to grab a bargain. So much so that he is even willing to part with his private information at a moment’s notice.
Hence, we at Brevistay decided to test the limits of this behavior, by playing a small prank on our customers.
As you can see in the screens depicting the flow of the prank. We baited the customer with a discount of 50% and very soon he was ready to part with the private information of his partner, without realizing that he didn’t actually take any consent from his partner before sharing the details.
Also, when the next screen falsely prompted him to look into the booking details of his partner, he was ready to intrude only to find out that it was a prank.
However, we added a little twist in the prank by rewarding the good Samaritans who respected the privacy of their partners and preferred not to see their booking details, with an actual Brevistay voucher which would give them 50% off on their next booking.
The Statistics
If you are a numbers person, then you will be astonished to learn that close to 76% of the participants wanted to see the booking details of their partner (got fooled :P) while only 24% percent did not intrude (got rewarded with the voucher :D).
All the screens were dummy screens and did not capture any data entered by the participants but was successful in giving us a behavioral insight, which is that people have grown more impulsive and anxious, and social media and e-commerce platforms and their never-ending sales and promotions have ingrained this feeling of missing out (FOMO) deep in our brains.
To put it in popular terminology we are so hooked to the internet and extremely trusting of these platforms that we would instantly part with sensitive information for instant gratification. This apathy towards someone’s private information is not new since a consensus bias is prevalent in the society which argues that a lot of personal details have been made publicly available by people on their own.
True, but in many cases, it was manufactured consent, he wanted to avail an offer or purely fell victim to a clickbait. However, user never really intended his information to be reshared again and again with various platforms. The Honourable Supreme Court of India has also declared that “Even if someone is standing in public, it does not mean he has waived off his right to privacy.”
We at Brevistay, are married to this idea of privacy and always try to capture as little personal information as possible in order to facilitate a hotel booking on our platform. Also, data security of our clients is a virtue that we extoll, both at a personal level as well as at the organizational level.
Our model is simple, we will help our customer find quality micro-stay according to his convenience, but his entire experience, right from his entry to exist in our system will remain strictly private. His personal data never to be processed and packaged, and auctioned off to the highest bidder in the data market.
Hence, this prank was one such effort of Brevistay to disseminate awareness about privacy and consent among our current users and prospective users, as well as to demonstrate that if a hospitality partner is asking way too much personal information in the name of booking or discount, then he is definitely fooling you.😊
