Confusopoly


Confusopoly is confusing marketing designed to prevent the buyer making informed decisions. Dilbert's author Scott Adams defines confusopoly as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". For example, similar items like mobile phones are advertised at various price plans according to different combinations of available minutes, text messaging capabilities and other services, thus making these offers practically incomparable when it could be easy to price similar units of usage to allow informed comparisons. The term confusopoly also applies because confusion within the targeted consumer group is purposefully maintained, so choices are based on emotional factors.
The term has been adopted by economists. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray, championing meaningful regulation for the financial industry, used the term confusopoly to refer to large financial institutions :
Video game critic Jim Sterling criticized the video game industry's use of multiple limited and collector's editions as a confusopoly, citing games including Watch Dogs and Anthem as examples.