The problem was that it was presented in such a way that it seemed like a hustle. People would rather do without than think they've been taken advantage of.
Just announce the price before passing out the headphones. That's all. Conversion will increase without spending another nickel.
Continental could have already tested this, of course.
Most people will take free headphones, including those who initially have no intention of paying for TV. Most people will be too embarrassed to ask for headphones when bored during mid flight, especially if they've already refused them and told the air hostess they have absolutely no intention of paying such an outrageous fee.
Not telling people the price until they've decided they want something is just savvy marketing.
I think you touched on both issues. The $6 after the fact (the fact being I already purchased my ticket) seems like such a petty way to make money. I've been on Continental on longer flights (Houston to Quito) and I've thought to myself "If they raised my ticket by $6, I would be fine, but asking for the money afterwards is so annoying." There's this mental block that I have, and I'm sure others, too, that after I've paid for my flight, that's it, no more charges or fees, I'm done.
As others have mentioned though, when it comes to searching for flights, we as consumers have brought this upon ourselves because more often than not, we don't distinguish based on features, we select based on price, so we have given airlines every incentive to pull these kinds of tricks. Once enough of "us" start buying the 4th, 5th or 6th most expensive fare because we like that airline's pillows/movies/flight attendants, then maybe things will change.
>> we as consumers have brought this upon ourselves because more often than not, we don't distinguish based on features, we select based on price, so we have given airlines every incentive to pull these kinds of tricks.
True, but at the same time, there is very little way of distinguishing between features. Policies like extra baggage charges are extremely poorly labelled for most major airlines such that charts like this one (http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/blog/3801089/airline-baggage-...) are not uncommon to make sense of all the different policies. Furthermore, policies like the charge for extra headphones or TVs seem to vary not from airline to airline, but airplane to airplane, depending on the media equipment that the plane is outfitted with.
I think consumers do want those extra perks and would be willing to pay more for them, but simply do not have the means to make sense of the byzantine airfare purchasing 'system' that we have. Hence, consumers go with the lowest price as the one thing of which they can be sure. This is why I think Hipmunk is so important as a startup. It's the first attempt by a flight search engine to rank and display flights not just by price, but also by some of these other features.
The problem was that it was presented in such a way that it seemed like a hustle. People would rather do without than think they've been taken advantage of.
Just announce the price before passing out the headphones. That's all. Conversion will increase without spending another nickel.