Decoy pricing is a packaging tactic that introduces a deliberately inferior option to make another option look more attractive by comparison. The decoy is not there to sell. It exists to change how buyers weigh the choices around it, steering them toward the option you most want chosen.

The mechanism is the decoy effect, or asymmetric dominance. When two options are hard to compare, buyers stall and default to the cheaper one or to no decision at all. Add a third option that is clearly worse than one of the first two but not the other, and the comparison resolves itself. The option that dominates the decoy reads as the obvious pick.

In SaaS pricing and packaging this plays out in tiers. A vendor offering a $1,000 plan and a $2,500 plan often watches buyers anchor low. Add a third tier at $2,400 with materially less than the top plan includes, and the $2,500 option stops looking expensive and starts looking sensible. The decoy may sell almost nothing; it earns its place by reframing the tier above it as value rather than splurge.

Decoy pricing earns a bad reputation when it is used to trick rather than clarify, and B2B buyers compare notes. Used well, it organizes a confusing set of choices around the option that fits most buyers. That makes it a pricing and packaging decision, not a discount, and it belongs in the same conversation as tier design and value-based pricing.

For B2B and PE-backed companies, decoy pricing is a low-cost lever that works inside the packaging you already have. It changes no list prices and adds no product, yet it can shift mix toward higher tiers when the structure is designed with intent.

Rethinking your tier structure or packaging? Schedule a discovery call with Acustrategy.