Women wearing a sandwich board that read "Ask me to pay your bus fare and I will" were positioned at bus stations in Newcastle, Medway, Manchester, Perth and Leicester, but were mostly just ignored. The experiment ran during morning rush hour each day for a week and just 38 people in total across the country accepted the offer.
When questioned, the minority who did eventually accept the free cash admitted they were reluctant at first because they thought the offer was too good to be true. Those who did accept were generally teenagers, suggesting that the older we get, the more cynical of goodwill gestures we become. Results showed that 69pc of Brits were too suspicious to accept offers of goodwill and also felt rewards and freebies are often too good to be true, while only 23pc of people thought it possible to get something for nothing.
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The research was conducted by Ice, a loyalty scheme which rewards customers with Ice points for spending on eco-friendly goods and services. Jude Thorne, Chief Executive Officer of Ice, said: "Our experiment shows that as a nation, we simply don't accept the notion of genuine bargains, discounts and offers with no catch, despite admitting that difficult times are forcing us to seek them out actively."
7 comments:
I would like to know how many people thought "I can afford to pay for my own bus fare, so I will leave the limited funds that are available for goodwill offers to people who actually have a need." That would be my reason for not accepting, not because I was to cynical.
What's this got to do with cynicism? I suspect it has more to do with pride.
If I saw that my immediate response would be "they're going to try to sell me something" and I don't want to waste my time saying no to them.
I'm with Ratz. I've been offered countlee free things over the last few decades only to find strings attached. My personal odds of finding such deals to be genuine is probably less than 1 out of 100. If it was more than bus fare it might be worth the gamble.
I agree with the above comments - my immediate thought would not be the cynical "they probably don't mean it" but rather the wary "what's the catch?"
@Anonymous - "what's the catch" is cynical. One thing about most people is that they don't want to be seen to ask for charity, no matter how small.
I think most people's thought process would be: "The bus fare is only a couple of quid. I can afford that. I'm not going to go cap in hand asking for a couple of quid I can easily afford."
I'm not like that however. Pride can take a leap; I'd ask. And so can the catch. I find it very easy to say no to sales people and panhandlers. Maybe its because I used to work in sales, but I know that salespeople know when no means no - it's the point when the prospect walks away. I'm sure panhandlers have that one figured too.
It would be interesting to see what the outcome would be if they had removed the logo
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