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A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

blog.gumroad.com

41–46 of 46 posts

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a burrito chain in the northeast US called Boloco, and while their prices seem pretty arbitrary, all of the post tax prices are always whole dollar amounts. It's the only place I know of in Boston that does that.

As a Brit, I was amazed first time I went to the States with this idea of shops not putting the actual price you're going to pay on stuff. I don't care how much money the shop is getting, as opposed to the state. All I want to know is how much money I'm going to be spending to get the thing, and I don't want to have to do calculations to work it out.

As an American, I'm used to our system, but I don't like it ... but, the tricky part in the US is that sales tax(es) aren't national, so prices differ at state, county, city, and sub-city areas. I single café can build the tax price into their prices, which I do see occasionally, but there's no way to advertise a price of a something, including the tax, nationally (or even across all of my city, Minneapolis, for example).

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#42
post #30

I always round prices up that end with .9x. On Kickstarter when prices are $79 I count them as $80. Saving me that minor calculation makes me more likely to buy something, it simply removes an annoyance. Is that really un-normal?

I'm not sure. I also do this, but maybe something is happening, even to us, subconsciously. Maybe the effect goes away if we walk away and remember the price as $80, though.

I think one effect might be that when you don't look to closely at something, and later remember the price being just what's before the decimal separator.

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#43
When I played on World of Warcraft Auction House the main advantage of this tactic was the fact that it placed your items before all evenly priced items. I've exploited that for a while to move large amounts of inventory.

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#44

That's the Anchoring Effect. It's not just about 3.99 appearing cheaper than 4.00. It appears cheaper than 3.00 because the 9's make the 3 look small. $3.29 appears especially cheap. The cheapest-looking price point between $3 and $4 is probably $3.19 or $3.29. ($3.09 isn't as cheap-looking, because the '0' adversely anchors the 3. There is a trade-off in the appearance of simplicity, of course. If you're selling car…

> That's the Anchoring Effect. It's not just about 3.99 appearing cheaper than 4.00. It appears cheaper than 3.00 because the 9's make the 3 look small.

Compare http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#45
post #40

I always round prices up that end with .9x. On Kickstarter when prices are $79 I count them as $80. Saving me that minor calculation makes me more likely to buy something, it simply removes an annoyance. Is that really un-normal?

I also round them up, but in doing so, it makes me think about the fact that the price doesn't reflect the 'value' of the product: If they hadn't rounded it to ₤X.99, would it have been more or less? How much of that is profit?…

What's wrong with profit? And what does their cost have to do with value?

Re: A Penny Saved: Psychological Pricing

#46
"At Gumroad, we’ll stop just shy of letting you charge tenths of cents (come on, gas stations, that’s cheating) or allowing the font on your change to be smaller on-screen."

Does that mean they won't allow it in the future?

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