5 ms·

> This isn't even getting into the actual value of perceived value (cf. the sticker price of wine vs. its perceived quality). Really interesting stuff. I fall

• maaaats 8y ago
  Even without discount on the more expensive one, it can be used as a marketing trick to make you buy more expensive. For instance offer three versions of a product: $1 branded as cheap/bad, $2 branded as good, $5 branded as luxury. The last one exists mainly to anchor the value of the $2 as also cheap and to make you buy it. If one only had the choice between $1 and $2, most people would choose $1 option.
  • iamgopal 8y ago
    I know purchase manager at large companies does that quite often. Get quote from three companies. Cancel out highest and lowest bidder and confirm order to middle one.
  • mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Branding and perceived high quality due to high price works ridiculously well too. My wife will always want to buy the higher price item because “it’s probably better”. I’ve looked at pricing and anchoring extensively and know better but at this point I gave up trying to convince her. Now marketers take our money and I won’t blink an eye, just cry inside.
    • hopler 8y ago
      This is what drives me to MGTOW -- Men Getting Their Own Wallet.
  • chriswarbo 8y ago
    I agree that there's been a move to split "Store Brand X" into "Store Basics X", "Store Brand X" and "Store Finest X", and that the "basic" product is often perfectly good. However, for broader product categories, there's also a tendency for the most and least expensive products to be outliers, with the cheapest being barely enough to justify the label and the dearest being aimed at rich suckers. Hence the heuristic of getting the 2nd cheapest (especially if it's a one-off consumable, where savings won't accumulate); or, if splashing out, getting the 2nd most expensive. In my experience this definitely applies to things like wine and chocolate, where the scale is roughly: | Q| u| x a| x l| x x x x i| xx x t| y| |x +---------------------------------------------- Price
    • rlue 8y ago
      In some cases, businesses know consumers are following some heuristic like this, and counter-strategize accordingly (or so I've heard). According to this 2013 blog post[0], > Restaurants realize that many people won’t order the least expensive wine (no one wants to look like a cheapskate!) so they often go for the second cheapest. That’s exactly why it’s often the most marked-up bottle on the list. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131210062034/http://www.urbanspoon.com/blog/2013/12/10-things-restaurants-arent-telling/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131210062034/http://www.urbans...
• paganel 8y ago
  What I ended up doing in order to avoid this is that I’ve been buying from the same brands for some time now, i.e. the same soap, the same shampoo, the same butter (truth be told, for butter I fluctuate between two brands), the same chocolate, the same detergent etc. This way I don’t fall for tricks like the one you mentioned because I almost don’t care about any other brands and products than the ones I’m really interested in. I also get to save a lot of time in the supermarket because each time I visit it I know exactly what I want.
  • underwater 8y ago
    You're not exactly beating the system. That's just plain old brand loyalty, which companies love. You've stopped shopping based on quality or value, and they can turn a profit without investing anything into marketing.
    • paganel 8y ago
      I don’t want to beat the system because I know it’s a lost battle from the get-go ans I also don’t really feel the need of being “lured” into buying a product. That’s also one of the reasons why I still don’t use an ad-blocker, as I’m almost totally blind to advertising, both online and offline. I do think though that this tactic has made me purchase less stuff over time, I consider that as a win.
      • nsomaru 8y ago
        With an adblocker, pages load faster and you save data. If you’re already blind to ads then it shouldn’t matter...
    • jacobyoder 8y ago
      paganel is saving time by no thinking about the issue, so 'winning' in some sense. However... you don't know what the brand is. The brand may be the store brand, which... while it's brand loyalty, is almost always the cheapest, and usually don't have any marketing expense beyond the product in the store in the first place. I've learned to love most store brands, and... it may be my mind rationalizing it, but I think they've actually become much better quality wise than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But again may be a trick of the brain. Biggest issue I see is that store brands often don't have the same level of variety. Chips - store brand may have 4 flavors - other vendors may have 10-12 on the shelf above. If I really want a specific flavor, I'll get a name brand, otherwise, just go with store brand (or.. with chips, hopefully skip altogether!)
• eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Thankfully in some European country food must be sold with a clear indication of the "real" cost per KG
  • StavrosK 8y ago
    Greece does this, and it's a lifesaver. No more ballparking the math, I buy the cheapest shampoo and toothpaste per liter very easily.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      It's EU-wide, thanks to the Price Indications Directive (98/6/EC).
  • mcv 8y ago
    Yeah, it's really convenient. I often compare the price per weight when choosing between two different but similar items. I also remember a time when I needed a new dishwasher, and one shop had it from $300 for $200, while another shop just had the same dishwasher simply for $200. I got it from the second shop, of course.
  • klyrs 8y ago
    Canada does this, but often products are sold per kg, lb, or 100g. Frequently, different tiers of quality are sold in different units, so comparison shopping is that much more tedious. And the 100g thing is especially pernicious -- all too often, a first glance indicates a 50% discount that careful examination shows to be a 5x markup!
• vxNsr 8y ago
  When it comes to commodities, the best thing to do is shop by unit, ignore the "sale price" and the msrp, look only at the cost/ounce or cost/unit most US stores list both on their price tags, though you have to watch out for when they use different measurements for directly competing products (ie kellogs sold by the ounce while store brand by the pound). In semi-blind taste tests I've always preferred the name brand of cereals but not enough to pay extra for them, so when they come out to be the same price as the store brand per ounce I'll buy them otherwise I just go with the cheapest option.
  • wastedhours 8y ago
    > commodities The issue for consumers is that every decision now is about weighing up brand differentiation - DTC is no longer about commodities, but about niches. Unless you absolutely know the exact type of product you want (i.e. you definitely want some flakes of corn), my take is we're shopping in "ranges". e.g. I need something to eat for breakfast, and I won't be offended at paying more than £X for it. I find it the same with soap - on a basic level, a 35p bottle of handwash is the same as a more expensive one, but I've now been primed that there's this range of prices I won't be offended at paying, and if something more expensive is reduced into that range, I'll snap it up as a "deal" because it was out of reach and now it's in reach.
  • hopler 8y ago
    The name brands taste better because they have put more effort into researching weird chemicals that taste good
    • vxNsr 8y ago
      I’ve heard it’s kinda the opposite. Apparently, lotsa white labeled goods are manufactured in the same plant as the name brand stuff, by that brand, but to differentiate it, the brand will tweak the recipe slightly for the white label run.
      • TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I suspect (but never confirmed) that they have some "quality binning" at the factory; the runs closer to set quality get the "main brand" label, the slightly worse get the "value brand" label, etc. That the cheap store brand is made by the same company that makes the expensive brands is true, one only has to check the manufacturer data on the label.
• benj111 8y ago
  Surely it depends on your buying habits, and how you buy. Now if you get stuck on the hedonistic treadmill and start buying the more expensive cereal all the time that is bad from a cost point of view, but if it's a one off treat replacing another £3.50 box of cereal, you've saved a pound. I suppose we should rationally evaluate the benefit that the new cereal independently of the price. And then if the benefit outweighs the cost, then we should buy. But we aren't robots, and we like nice things. Ps I often buy the wine that's on offer, it does depend on the supermarket though, as some just sell rubbish. It stops me having to look sagely at a half dozen bottles, that I have absolutely no basis to differentiate between, other than label.
• C1sc0cat 8y ago
  That does depend as often own label products are often much much worse. - We recently had some Tesco own label sausages substituted for higher cost branded ones and the Tesco ones where vile and unedible.
• celticninja 8y ago
  I always check the price per litre/gram/unit etc because sometimes what looks like a good deal isn't.