Nudged at Checkout: Who’s Really in Control of Your Basket?

 

When shopping online, it's easy to assume that what you buy comes down to personal choice. You type in what you want, scroll a little, and pick the option that seems best for you.

 

At least, it feels that way.

 

Why is the first product always so tempting? Why do five-star ratings seem so reassuring? And buttons flashing “only one left” suddenly make your decisions feel so urgent?

 

Digital platforms aren’t neutral: they shape how those options appear. So the question is: are your choices really yours, or are you being steered more than you realise?

To understand this, we need to look beyond the products themselves and focus on how choices are presented.

 

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How Choice Architecture Shapes What You Buy

           

In a perfect world, when browsing products on websites like Amazon, the first few results following a search for a new lamp would be the most popular or the best value.

But those top spots aren’t always earned.

 

Sponsored products often occupy these top positions (and positions throughout the rest of the page), allowing sellers to effectively buy visibility. In some cases, they can even pay to secure those positions for specific keywords (Amazon, 2021).

So why does this work? The answer lies in what researchers call “choice architecture”: the idea that the way options are presented can shape the decisions we make, often more than the options themselves (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).

 

And once something is placed right in front of us, we tend to act on it quickly, valuing the convenient and visible options; a tendency behavioural economists describe as ‘present bias’ (O’Donoghue and Rabin, 1999).

So, if you end up buying that first product, does it really reflect your preferences? Or the size of the seller's advertising budget? This information gap emerges because digital platforms like Amazon understand how placement influences behaviour, but most consumers do not (though by reading this, you’re already ahead of the curve!).

It Doesn’t Stop There…

 

Once Amazon has you on the product’s page, the website starts throwing in other ‘helpful’ suggestions. Features like “Frequently bought together” and “Recommended for you” nudge you towards a colour-changing LED bulb, a new shade, a stand to match, and three other things you didn’t know you needed but you now can’t see your desk without (Rock et al., 2024).

 

These add-ons are placed right next to the “Add to basket” button, to grab your attention, making it that much more tempting to select them (Rock et al., 2024). After all, you’ve always wanted to DIY your own lamp…right?

 

Because Amazon controls the shopping journey, it is basically your overly involved tour guide, deciding what you see first, where you stop next, and what somehow ends up in your basket by the end of it. So, a bigger basket may not just reflect what you wanted. It may just reflect the route Amazon walked you down.

The Room That “Almost” Got Away: How Booking Sites Nudge Your Choices

And that kind of guided journey does not stop with shopping sites. You’re browsing through hotel booking sites. You find a good option, and then suddenly:

“Only 1 room left!”
 “12 people are viewing this!”

Instantly, you’re pushed into a race against the clock (and the 12 other people looking at the same room). You click “Book Now”. But was that really the best choice for you?

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has raised concerns about these tactics. “Pressure selling” is common practice on booking sites, and others range from urgency cues to misleading discount claims, which feed further into present-bias behaviours (Competition and Markets Authority, 2019; Teubner and Graul, 2020; O’Donoghue and Rabin, 1999). Instead of asking, “Is this the best deal?”, consumers find themselves asking, “Will I miss out?”

These urgency cues work as a form of social proof, pushing consumers to read other people’s apparent interest as a sign of value (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004). The problem is that these signals operate under the same asymmetry of information that customers on Amazon experience.

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Fake Reviews

 

This same information gap follows consumers beyond search results, shaping reviews and signals they rely on to judge a product’s quality. Star ratings act as that signal, but if reviews are fake or biased, that signal falls apart. The CMA opened investigations into several firms over “fake or misleading reviews”, warning of the damage they do to consumer trust (Competition and Markets Authority, 2026). This is signalling failure as consumers think they’re choosing based on quality, but they instead respond to distorted reputational metrics. So, you might think you’re making a choice based on quality, when really, it's a response to the most convincing misleading signals.

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So….is ‘Choice Architecture’ always bad?

Not all nudging is negative. You probably do want the clearest option and easiest checkout. Good choice architecture can make online decisions faster and more manageable. Without some structuring, you would be lost sorting through hundreds of lamp listings trying to find the perfect one (Competition and Markets Authority, 2022). So, the issue isn’t that your choices are shaped, it’s how, and in whose interest (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).

Final Thoughts: Scroll a bit further?

So, the next time you see “Only 1 room left!” or are browsing for a new home accessory, it is worth slowing down, remembering your own preferences, and noticing when a platform may be trying too hard to help.

In digital markets, a little scepticism goes a long way. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is exactly what the platform hopes you will not: scroll a bit further.

If you want to test how easily these nudges can catch you out, try this quick quiz here.

And if you want to test what you’ve just learnt, challenge yourself here.

 

Bibliography:

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Cognitive Bias Lab (2026) Cognitive Bias Quiz. Available at: https://www.cognitivebiaslab.com/quiz/ (Accessed: 23 April 2026).

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Competition and Markets Authority (2025) CMA launches major consumer protection drive focused on online pricing practices. GOV.UK, 18 November. Available At: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-launches-major-consumer-protection-drive-focused-on-online-pricing-practices  (Accessed: 20 April 2026)

Competition and Markets Authority. (2026, March 27). Fake and misleading reviews: 5 businesses under CMA investigation. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-and-misleading-reviews-5-businesses-under-cma-investigation (Accessed: 21 April 2026)

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