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People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

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Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#201

Post by m463 »

iceburgcrm wrote: post #176
m463 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that most business owners don't care about ANY of that. even returns - it might actually be enough friction that returns would go down. for example, why would a donut shop give receipts? I have a friend who recently opened a bar. He did cash in the beginning, but finally got the electronic payments for the bar installed. He immediately caught a bartender stealing. He noticed that at the start, the bar…

It might be because an electronic payment system can accept exact tender and / or the options to tip defaults to lower payment options / easier to hide a small tip to your friends With cash few have exact change and the table can see what you give. This leads to rarely asking for change back and putting higher amounts as it ups your social ranking. This effect is easier to see in a bar. Often you need to keep track o…

Although employees should get the benefit of the doubt (and he did in the beginning), the camera footage eliminated all doubt.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#203

Post by RavingGoat »

YVoyiatzis wrote: post #10

Actually, the .99 price-point started as a clever way to prevent theft, manage inventory, and keep track of sales. The idea was that pricing something at $1.00 might tempt a cashier to pocket the bill, but pricing it at $0.99 meant they’d have to open the register to give change, reducing the risk. Back then, most registers didn’t print receipts. This method also helped with inventory control. For example, if the tot…

This does absolutely nothing since the cashier can just have pennys in their pocket.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#204

Post by moi2388 »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #9

I never like thinking of pricing in this way. When you price something as $9.99, you're signaling to your customer that you're trying to manipulate them. Whereas a flat $10 is honest. Integrity means a lot. The software I sell is priced in whole numbers. However, the magnitude of effect claimed in the article is huge. It's the difference between selling at cost and a huge margin. Between doing well and shutting down…

People in stores don’t calculate. People who buy software do. Like actual calculations: $10 / month / user * 100 users

In a store people often don’t even look at the price, just”I see cheese. Oeh, LESS than $3?”

Completely different target group

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#205

Post by OJFord »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #164
OJFord wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pre-digital calculator salesmen? For what purpose? Say you're a salesman of 7 different products/SKUs; you sold 186 products today. What do you do with that information?

You're still hyper fixating on one single point. And I'm not a businessman. I imagine businesses never do one thing for one reason like software functions. Bankers can tell a lot from a security standpoint based on seemingly frivolous data. Maybe it's the same logic here. If you end every day swelling exactly XX0 products, something is amiss. It at least prompts a deeper investigation, since running through weeks of…

I'm 'hyper fixating' on the point that seemed nonsense to me, that I commented on, and that you replied to.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#206

Post by satvikpendem »

kaba0 wrote: post #172
satvikpendem wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, marketers aren't stupid (but it turns out people in general are stupid, enough to fall for this trick and many others).

That’s pretty ingenious to call people dumb. This is psychology and these tricks work on you even if you trivially understand that 3.99 is not feasibly cheaper than 4.00 — your brain simply processes information non-stop in the background and you are affected by this. Hell, there was even a study that people who claim they don’t fall for these kind of marketings tricks are more susceptible to fall for this, so, take…

Ingenious? Or disingenuous? Regardless, I agree with you, "tricks" and "dumb" was not said derogatorily, I meant basically what you said, that humans are biologically "dumb" in terms of falling for these "tricks," similarly to how optical illusions work. It seems you summarized my point better than I could.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#207

Post by feetsoup »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #184
feetsoup wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding point 2, it seems strange to ask 'what changes?' when the point of the article you're commenting on is showing how and why you spend more when presented with 9-ending items. If it was found to make consumers spend 8% more, quite a lot changes - and in a time of unprecedented household debt in the US, it seems like tactics contrived to get people to spend more are very much worthy of discussion. Either way,…

My argument is different. The article is studying the macro situation, my comment focuses on the micro. You can argue an exploitative strategy on the macro, but the individual themselves is still getting a product they are assumedly fine paying for (and there's a big assumption that "people wouldn't buy it otherwise" if priced a cent above) . The harm on the micro level is negligible, and you can even argue the macro…

Fair enough, perhaps I'm bringing some biases into this since I think online discussion has a tendency to be very dismissive of less sensational or impactful topics. I really don't think you're defending the pricing strategy, trivialization of criticism isn't necessarily a defense of the object of criticism, although for how often the two are conflated I could see why you would think that is how your opinions are being seen.

I don't think households need to be spending 8% more of money they don't have (if we're considering rising household debt) when they go out shopping. The issue is probably more evocative than it logically should be for some people because of the aroma of deception around it. Making superficial changes to price to take advantage of human distortions in quantity to get them to spend more has at least a shade of deception to it (I don't say that as a valid argument, just hoping to lend some context for why people would get worked up over it).

If you don't think that's adequate to make it a 'problem'... well, fair enough, I'm not entirely convinced either. But I'm not seeing a very strong case being made for the contrary, besides 'other things are more important' and the interesting claim that consumers must not be impacted because they're still buying these products ("Of course they love their job, wouldn't they quit otherwise?")

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#208

Post by galdosdi »

pluc wrote: post #187
galdosdi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Why don't you just look at unit prices instead? That's the only price I ever look at and other than edge cases like trying new things or goods that you can't use up fast enough, there's no reason to look at anything else. If your store doesn't have them, that's a sign you're at the wrong store and everything is overpriced. Teach your kids this PS: Walmart, which has pretty good prices, is famous for odd prices…

We don't have unit prices here.

In your whole country? Which one? I'm sad to hear it.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#209

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

im3w1l wrote: post #166
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Practices like this stick around because of the desire to be seen making proactive recommendations with putative benefit One manifestation of this phenomenon in it's extreme form is cancer diagnosis and treatments. Barring a few exceptions, most cancer treatments are useless.

A lot of cancers can be cured.

Yes, it does appears so to the extent I have explored.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#210

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

kaba0 wrote: post #174
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Practices like this stick around because of the desire to be seen making proactive recommendations with putative benefit One manifestation of this phenomenon in it's extreme form is cancer diagnosis and treatments. Barring a few exceptions, most cancer treatments are useless.

What a thoroughly uninformed and idiotic take. The narcissism of this field is astonishing.

Thank you for calling me uninformed and idiotic.
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