This is how you are influenced while shopping without noticing it

Pricing experts and marketing professionals have developed some strategies so that you, too, can be influenced while shopping.

Cheap alone often isn’t enough for a customer to buy a product.

You may have already noticed this while shopping.

For example, when faced with three similar products with different prices, do you often choose the middle one?

Then you’ve likely fallen for one of the tricks of marketing professionals and pricing strategists.

This not only applies to supermarket, but also restaurants, who often use this trick with their wine bottles.

So, Bait Products

As you have guessed or not, one such trick is the use of so-called bait products. But how does it work?

For example: They are employed when a retailer has two similar products, one of which is more expensive than the other, and they want to sell more of the pricier one.

They then offer another, even more expensive product. Which they in turn do not expect to sell.

So this entices many customers who have previously bought the cheaper version to now purchase the middle (formerly the most expensive) product.

The new product serves only as bait.

The underlying assumption is that the purchase decision is not solely determined by the number on the price tag but also by how the price is perceived.

In her book “Price Psychology”, author Leigh Caldwell writes that each product has a subjective price for each customer, which is categorized into subjective classifications: too expensive, acceptable, and cheap.

The success of bait products has been proven in studies.

Alternative read “Price Psychology”, from economist Richard G. Lewis.

“The single most significant decision in evaluating a business is pricing power”, Warren Buffet, CEO Berkshire Hathaway

Do you know other examples?

Cornerstone Items

Cornerstone items are goods whose price the customer knows well and can therefore compare easily.

In a supermarket, these could be items like bread, coffee, butter, or milk.

If these items are cheap, the store is perceived as inexpensive, attracting new customers, as stated by Simon Herrmann and Martin Fassnacht in their book “Price Management”.

I, for myself, when I was still driving a car, I knew the gas prices of all the local gas stations by heart and even the times when it was expensive or the cheapest. What is it for you?

Odd Prices

0.99 instead of 1 Euro, 66.66 instead of 70 Euro — the primary goal of such odd prices is to attract attention.

The categories play a role here as well.

If a price is just below a threshold like 1 or 10 Euros, it falls into a different category for the customer.

For example, instead of being considered “too expensive,” it is seen as “acceptable.”

Can customers directly compare two prices, such as with discounts, the first digits are crucial.

US scientists found that most people perceive the difference between $0.93 and $0.79 as greater than between $0.89 and $0.75, even though it is the same in reality.

This is because the brain simplifies the comparison by only looking at the differing first digits (“0,” which is the same in both cases).

Even with higher amounts, odd numbers can be better.

Psychologist David Loschelder investigated this and explained that a precise amount, such as 17,235 Euros, suggests that the seller has carefully considered the value of their product — in this case, cars.

However, this mainly applies to buyers who are not well-versed in a product.

Professionals may find such details suspicious.

Remember: prices can be very relative, even arbitrarily.

Packages

Retailers can effectively combine odd prices with package deals. In general, items have better sales chances when offered in packs of two, three, or four.

You’ve probably also grabbed “Three pairs of socks for 6.99 Euros.”

However, the package rule does not apply to shipping costs or service fees. Retailers should not bundle them but should always display them separately.

The reason is clear here too: It’s better if the price for the actual product remains low.

Layout

Prices should always be placed in the bottom left, because they are then perceived as smaller, writes marketing expert Nick Kolenda on his website, author of “Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior”.

The font should also be relatively small.

Relative, at least, to the reference price if there is one.

For higher prices, dots should also be avoided.

A price with a dot takes longer to read and thus appears larger.

For example, 1,455 = One-thousand-four-hundred-fifty-five vs. 1455 = Fourteen-hundred-fifty-five.

With these tips, you might pay a bit more attention to prices on your next shopping trip.

If you still come home with more items than those on your shopping list, that’s okay.

It may just mean that the pricing experts have done a good job.

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