From the Editor's Desk

Reframing the Competition

Imagine that two brands are running contests where participants stand to win nearly identical fitness watches. Both companies will award the watches to randomly chosen winners, amounting to 1 percent of all participants. Brand A has capped the number of entries at 1,000, while Brand B allows up to 10,000 entries. Which competition would you rather enter?

Competitive scenarios involving large groups of individuals are par for the course in all aspects of life. Our recent research, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology and featured in Harvard Business Review, examined a wide spectrum of competitive contexts. Our findings reinforce the idea that a larger competition size can discourage participation even when the objective likelihood of winning remains identical. We also found that helping people better comprehend their chances of winning could make a huge difference to whether people choose to take part in a contest or not.

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