Nope. Otherwise people should absolutely love my approach of forcing them to buy at gunpoint - perfect conversion rate!

Even if you assume that the data implies customers prefer the fee at the end, you'd also have to research why they do so - and solve the mystery of why your statistic suggests they prefer the fee at the end, yet direct user feedback suggests the opposite.

>It is just as irrational to not buy the product as to buy it in either scenario, since the price is the same.

That kind of rationality requires perfect information. But it is likely that the price appears lower in the fee-at-end-case, because that is the only effect that the change has - so perfect information is not given. As the price is in fact the same as you say, that would make fee-at-end the case with irrational behavior.

>You're starting with the prior that buying stuff is bad and should be discouraged in general. This is quite arguable.

No, my premise is that buying stuff while you don't know the price is bad, which I think is a commonly accepted sentiment.