-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
The psychology of prices not being rounded to the nearest dollar works shockingly well on people
- Thread starter BAD
- Start date
One of my dreams is to become god emperor to force every consumer good to be sold on whole dollar increments and no 49/95/99 bullshit of any kind and only on 25 cent increments if it's below $10. I'm just happy I don't need to deal with cash 95% of the time anymore and don't have to worry about loose change. I hate nickels, dimes and pennies.
Yeah it's easy to say exactly the ideal way of thinking about price tags when you're in a forum topic about it but the point is if you're looking at these day in and day out it's easy to get tripped up once in a while.
Idk, I round up nearly everything. Distance, movie run times, train commute estimated duration, price, etc. Provides a buffer if needed.
I am more just wondering why this works than saying people should get better at it or anything
i tend to always round up though. I don't think I've everrounded something with .99 down to the base number.
even with .49 I round up to the next dollar
i saw an advert the other day for a car at £29,995
seriously wtf?
it's really £30,000 but oh i'm saving £5 so it's basically £29,000!
seriously wtf?
it's really £30,000 but oh i'm saving £5 so it's basically £29,000!
I don't really get it myself, but can see the science of why some people fall for it. It's only for the purpose of attraction, isn't it? At the end of the day the customer is still handing over 5 dollars for a 4.99 purchase, so I'm sure they'd realize at some point that they're paying virtually $5 for something.
It seems like deals in general work more on people I know, including me. Seeing a slash with a big percentage decrease below it and a reduced price do screwy things to my head.
It seems like deals in general work more on people I know, including me. Seeing a slash with a big percentage decrease below it and a reduced price do screwy things to my head.
I mean you see it all the time on this forum too, people only look at how much they pay out of pocket when they used a gift card or reward certificate.
I like how almost everyone's response is, "yeah, this works, but not on me." If that were true, they wouldn't do it.
If it's a £399 item I read it as £399 as I can probably find something to put that £1 extra towards like Milk to drink in the future.
If it's a £3.99 I read it as £4. Not much I can buy for a penny and unless you are specifically going to the bank who's going to be carrying 100 pennies on hand with them.
If it's a £3.99 I read it as £4. Not much I can buy for a penny and unless you are specifically going to the bank who's going to be carrying 100 pennies on hand with them.
On eBay I would always list at $XX.80. I felt like 8 is such a happy number that it would cause people to round down. I have no science to back this assertion, but I'd like to think I've made $2-3 over my lifetime by relying on this devious tactic.
I looked it up, and one of the big factors is that 198 (Ichi kyu ppa) sounds good to the ear, better than 199 (Ichi kyu kyu).
Fortunately it never worked on me, but i know it defintiely works with a lot of people, it's crazy!
Here we don't have less than 0.05, so price are like 4.95, 9.95, and so on
Here we don't have less than 0.05, so price are like 4.95, 9.95, and so on
If I ever had my own business, bar or restaurant I'd just make the prices exact. It just looks silly.
If you think that's bad how about supermarkets changing music and lighting to either stimulate more spending or faster shopping based on the time of day?
Studied this quite a bit in college (marketing major). These tactics, along with stuff like eye-level products in stores, and store layouts, work wonders.
I round up on everything. If I'm shopping and something costs £1.10 I'll mentally count it as £2
When I was growing up, a friend's parents worked for door to door catalogue sales (you could do this before Amazon, lol). The company rounded up the .99s by a penny as an experiment at one point and the sales absolutely tanked.
So yeah, humans are weirdly easily manipulated.
So yeah, humans are weirdly easily manipulated.
My girlfriend is the type of person that reads '8.99' as '8'. Fucking hell. She is also the one that doesnt check the grams displayed in the price and in the item, it is common for her to grab something "super cheap" when in fact she just looked at the wrong price (looked at the price of a similar item with less grams). It is a nightmare to go grocery shopping with her, but I still enjoy it somehow.
Yup, grocery shopping is like that. I always think of 1.99 as 2, but then after I pay the bill I always think I am paying too much and then proceed to check... then at first I am absolutely sure that there is something wrong (just a quick look at the numbers), and then when I pay more attention I realize everything is fine.
I mean false advertising is effective too and that doesn't mean it's okay.
Taxes being added to the list price is BS as well. In Many other countries the price listed is after taxes are applied.
Walk up to the counter in the U.S. with a dollar bill trying to buy something that costs $0.99 and you won't have enough.
Walk up to the counter in the U.S. with a dollar bill trying to buy something that costs $0.99 and you won't have enough.
If anyone wants to read more about behavioral economics and things like price anchoring they should read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
He goes through a ton of cases of how marketing uses multiple options (tiered services), free options to manipulate the mind, and price anchoring to extract more money from consumers. It's all fascinating.
The one thing that got me was the simple Price Anchoring thought exercise. If you were to go to a car lot and buy a car for $20,000 and a block down the road they were selling the same car for $19,990 you'd probably say 'not worth it' but if you were buying a pen for $20 and it was $10 down the road you'd get your ass in the car and go save $10.
Tiered options, like having 3 different memory sizes for an iPhone is a simple trick to make the consumer feel better about buying the lower tier and anchroing them to a price. "Well at least I'm not buying the most expensive option," forgetting that the "cheap" option is still bad value. As a product line, if you only have one option, consumers don't have a sense of value and whether the value is appropriate or not. They begin to question it and may walk away altogether. By offering an inferior version or a super luxury version you are giving people something to compare to, they just forget it is relative.
Companies that offer deals like "Online only $19.99", "Print Only $24.99", "Bundle Deal! Online & Print $24.99" people just completely forget that they don't even want the print edition but they perceive they are getting more value and end up spending more.
We all think we are smarter than this, but we constantly still fail to recognize it's happening all the time. When planning for my wedding the price anchoring part hit home really bad. We way over spent on a ton of stuff that at the time seemed trivial because other big ticket items were involved. Same with purchasing a car.
I love this shit.
source: Price Anchoring
He goes through a ton of cases of how marketing uses multiple options (tiered services), free options to manipulate the mind, and price anchoring to extract more money from consumers. It's all fascinating.
The one thing that got me was the simple Price Anchoring thought exercise. If you were to go to a car lot and buy a car for $20,000 and a block down the road they were selling the same car for $19,990 you'd probably say 'not worth it' but if you were buying a pen for $20 and it was $10 down the road you'd get your ass in the car and go save $10.
Tiered options, like having 3 different memory sizes for an iPhone is a simple trick to make the consumer feel better about buying the lower tier and anchroing them to a price. "Well at least I'm not buying the most expensive option," forgetting that the "cheap" option is still bad value. As a product line, if you only have one option, consumers don't have a sense of value and whether the value is appropriate or not. They begin to question it and may walk away altogether. By offering an inferior version or a super luxury version you are giving people something to compare to, they just forget it is relative.
Companies that offer deals like "Online only $19.99", "Print Only $24.99", "Bundle Deal! Online & Print $24.99" people just completely forget that they don't even want the print edition but they perceive they are getting more value and end up spending more.
We all think we are smarter than this, but we constantly still fail to recognize it's happening all the time. When planning for my wedding the price anchoring part hit home really bad. We way over spent on a ton of stuff that at the time seemed trivial because other big ticket items were involved. Same with purchasing a car.
I love this shit.
source: Price Anchoring
Last edited:
Yup, for people that are trying to add up total cost while shopping it fucks things up.
Social psychology is a strong tool on people. The best way to not allow oneself to give in to these phenomena, is to know that they exist.
Technically with my psychology degree I could work for corporations to use techniques in advertising to get people to buy, but I never would feel comfortable to do the job. I got my degree and onwards to help people, not fool them into buying stuff.
Technically with my psychology degree I could work for corporations to use techniques in advertising to get people to buy, but I never would feel comfortable to do the job. I got my degree and onwards to help people, not fool them into buying stuff.
what in the gorgeous hell? ridiculous 😅 I would seriously protest about that. prices should be listed including tax and the tax amount listed. I thought this had become the standard.
and the amount of 'psychology doesn't work if you just round up' in this thread is weird. most people know how to round up, it can still affect you 😊