Confusopoly

Confusopoly (aka Dilbert's confusopoly) is an economic and marketing term referring to a purposeful act by a seller or group of sellers to confuse the buyer in order to ease the sale. A portmanteau of confusion and monopoly or oligopoly, 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 (Larsen et al. 2008).