The quote isn't solely self-congratulatory, as this pricing mechanism occurs in other industries too. For something like fuel stations, which (on the surface) a

The quote isn't solely self-congratulatory, as this pricing mechanism occurs in other industries too. For something like fuel stations, which (on the surface) appear plentiful in highly-trafficked areas, it would naively seem that there's plenty of choice for consumers to get the product at the price point they prefer. This is much, much more true for fuel in a populated area, than it is for other products where the alternatives are in fact not equivalent, despite being priced similar (e.g. airplane tickets for the same destination are seldom equivalent, even if there are several choices; they differ meaningfully in departure times, airports, airlines, layovers). In reality, most people are used to constant price fluctuations in the price of products such as motor fuel and airplane tickets, much more so than they are used to fluctuations in the price of staple foods at the supermarket, so most middle-income people (and up) don't go out of their way to find a different fuel station if the price is just a little bit higher, as both the cognitive effort of pondering to switch, and the physical effort of performing the switch often outweighs the savings. For very price-sensitive people, they are (predictably) screwed by this, as they have to run around more, or come armed with more data (price apps) or expend effort on discounts (coupons, driving to the cheapest location, holding off on purchases in the hope that the price drops) to save money.