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Why are people getting worse at “The Price Is Right”?
- didgeoridoo 7y agoI’d love to see some data on whether MSRP and average actual price paid have diverged over the years. It does feel like everything is perpetually “discounted” these days. If Price is Right is using the manufacturer’s list price, this would help explain why contestants undershoot more now — because the prices they tend to see advertised are in fact ~20% lower.
- grawprog 7y agoPrices on most things have also gone up somewhat substantially over the last 5 or more years fast enough I find I still think of some things being the price they were before and end up being surprised.when I realize it's been more expensive for a while. The discount trickery plays into it. You never notice the price increases at first as it's fairly standard all around from what i've seen to raise the base price during a sale, to the point where i've seen them raise the base price at the same time a sale starts then, cross out the new 'old' price and show how great of a sale it is. Then the sale ends and the price is higher.
- didgeoridoo 7y agoIf you live the the US, that’s likely a violation of FTC regulations against deceptive pricing[0]. My guess is that the “discount” phenomenon has a somewhat more innocent explanation; it’s the result of aggressive inventory management and sophisticated dynamic pricing models. Launch at a high price to snag the price-insensitive customers, and gradually discount down to pull in the lower end of the market and keep your unit volume relatively predictable (very helpful for just-in-time inventory management). [0]: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b9b38b61c935105b8ab64d193b46323e&mc=true&node=se16.1.233_11&rgn=div8 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b9b38b61c935105b8a...
- grawprog 7y agoI'm not sure, I live in Canada. I know years and years ago the grocery store I used to work at did this. We were told when I worked there that's specifically what they did.
- charwalker 7y agoYou just described the Pixel launch model. Launch at X in October then by Black Friday have a $200 off deal or 25% pricing by other vendors for the life of the phone. I wonder if that means the Pixel line is a much cheaper flagship, if the discount price is assumed to be the actual price execs are targeting after launch. I got a Pixel 2 then later a 3 for like 2/3 sticker price off promos by vendors and I'm happy with the price/features/etc. But I wouldn't pay launch price or it.
- taneq 7y ago> Prices on most things have also gone up somewhat substantially over the last 5 or more Have the effective prices gone up? Or have "normal prices" gone up and discounts increased in lockstep?
- Nasrudith 7y agoApparently companies tried that and the consumers didn't like it even though prices were comparable or actually better. It has been established as a norm annoyingly to those who would rather not have the noise.
- madengr 7y agoThe only thing I track over the years is the price of a regular sized candy bar at the grocery store checkout. When I was a kid in the 70’s and 80’s, they were $0.25, and now they are $1.25 or more.
- AlexB138 7y agoI also suspect the quality has dropped. It may just be because I'm not too big on sweets, or my palate becoming dull with age, but when I had a bit of Halloween candy recently it all tasted like wax and sugar. Even things that were favorites when I was a kid (Butterfingers and Whoppers in particular) were bland and flavorless compared to what I remembered.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoThe "fun sized" versions of candy generally given out at Halloween always tasted stale to me, likely due to the production and distribution methods for the holiday. I wouldn't use those to draw conclusions.
- karthikb 7y agoMore likely they were actually stale, lots of people buy a big stash of candy and hand it out over several years until it runs out.
- boomboomsubban 7y agoThey were stale, but even freshly purchased ones are often stale. Candy goes stale faster than you'd think, and seasonal candy often sits around longer and is stored with less care than a regular candy bar.
- LegitShady 7y agonobody does this. Keeps halloween candy between years? why? there's no advantage to having a "big stash". halloween candy decomposes into empty wrappers naturally anyways. It has a half life of 9 days.
- taneq 7y ago> It does feel like everything is perpetually “discounted” these days. Agreed, most of our general supermarket shopping seems to be on some significant "discount" since most of the time, to the point where we consider that the 'real' price and will avoid buying things when they're not discounted.
- Spivak 7y agoMy general rule for shopping is that the real price of an item is the lowest price that it routinely goes "on sale" for. Some examples (in my area): - The real price of a can of Coke at my grocery store is $.25/can or $3.00/12pk - The real price of Aerie underwear is $3.50/pair. - The real price of KitchenAid stand mixers is $189.99
- cgriswald 7y agoI do that mentally as well, but I generally ignore the word “sale”, and just focus on the most frequent low price. Around a decade ago I regularly bought a particular food product for $10.99. Then one week it was 13.99. The following week it was “on sale” for 11.99. Then it went up to 12.99 for a few weeks before going back to 10.99. It was eye opening and I also learned to stock certain products.
- RomanBob 7y agoThis won't work for loss leader discount though.
- vanniv 7y agoClothing and furniture are the most egregious in this regard. So many stores with "everything 30% off!" signs out front that have been in the sun so long they're cracked and fading.
- btgeekboy 7y agoI’ve found Kohl’s to be a great example of this. If you happen to find something that isn’t 30, 40% off, just try again next week.
- samueloph 7y agoI wonder if companies should be forbidden of advertising discounts at all, maybe they should just list what is the price and the customers can look out the price history and compare with competitors themselves (which is the defence mechanism for the current situation). I really don't like the idea of living in a society where companies I buy things from are trying to scam me by using Pavlov-esque techniques of using fake discounts to get my attention, especially because that works. Really, is that the society we want to have? I would like to hear counter arguments to this.
- pnongrata 7y agoYou should see the documentary PROPAGANDA: Engineering Consent, on Edward Bernays' theory.
- rtkwe 7y agoA lot of products you buy, especially those featured on The Price is Right, aren't sold directly to you they're sold to other companies/distributors for wholesale prices then they sell it on to you (or sometimes another step through a distributor). The manufacturer has no association with you at all and having them fix a price would remove competition from all those stores. It's coming really close to being a price control cartel too, it'll just mean stores can't compete on price to get you into their doors which will probably mean higher prices.
- Dirlewanger 7y agoI think about this (in different flavors) all the time. It all comes down to: how much government control do you want in society? For places like the US, well, the answer was at the time of its founding: as little as we can afford (but then again, I don't think the founding fathers could have predicted how absolutely gargantuan the federal government was going to get). The idea of "as little government as possible" was a rough model that continued to thrive as people migrated westward and states were incorporated. With such little oversight came eras like the Gilded Age, during one can see the birth of the modern corporation and the freedoms they took to grow and exploit their markets as they saw fit, all in the name of profits. We're now arguably in the middle of a 2nd Gilded Age; the size and scope of tech companies today would make the JP Morgan's/Rockefeller's of yester-century red with envy, and we've done jack shit as a society to hold them accountable for just about everything. And if we're in the middle of a 2nd Gilded Age, are we also in need of a 2nd wave of Progressivism? Most likely. I don't know how much they could get done though. The modern model of policymaking (especially at the federal level) is so choked with so many voices trying to get the attention of politicians that you often need a hefty budget to get anything done. Even then, it's at a snail's pace. And even if something smelling of a 2nd Progressive wave started to percolate, the sky-high polarization of public discourse on the Internet would make it nigh-impossible to get the facts straight. It makes it an even tougher sell to Americans that hate big government that we need to implement sensible legislation that is in their best interest. This is probably one of the biggest hurdles today to getting anything done: convincing the general public that corporations are not your friend and do not/never will have your best interests at heart.
- jedberg 7y agoNone of those things are the reason. The reason is simple. The Price is Right use MSRP. Back in the day, with only a few outlets, it was hard to get something less than MSRP. Today, it's almost impossible to find something at MSRP. There are so many outlets and our information on pricing is so good, stores have to compete by offering discounts.
- baby 7y agoManufacturer Suggested Retail Price
- Merrill 7y agoFair trade laws were repealed by '75, and it took a while for pricing to diverge and become as highly variable as today. Not sure whether anyone is doing it, but an early presumed advantage of internet commerce was that the seller could set a different price for each customer depending on the seller's knowledge of the customer's preferences, socioeconomic status, and other parameters. The global electronic village as the global electronic bazaar!
- zigzaggy 7y agoFor the most entertaining version of the answer, watch this really cool movie (1) with math, intrigue, and daytime television all rolled into one. It’s called The Perfect Bid. (Not affiliated just a fan.) I think I watched it on Amazon or Netflix. 1. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6854248/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6854248/
- dnautics 7y agoI would guess it's cumulative inflation of the nominal value: if something is 500 and then 750 later there's more numbers to guess in the space altogether.
- dannyw 7y agoThe effect is measured in percentages.
- jbpnoy6fifty 7y agoI worked in the Casino Technology industry and learned that Casino's generally prefer non-skill-based games in their game product line. This makes sense when predicting the financial outlook, based on customer behavior and spend profiles. In my opinion, in order to 'give out' less to their game participants, they most likely provided ways to randomize the win-ratio so that consumers win less, so it is less "skill-based"
- harimau777 7y agoWhere you working in America? My understanding was that in the US casino games were required to be non-skill based. Is that not the case? Or maybe it differs by state jurisdiction?
- tim58 7y agoFederally the only laws for US gambling are about online/interstate gambling. The rest of the laws are state/local laws which vary greatly.
- GuB-42 7y agoThere is a bit of skill involved in Blackjack, and a lot in of it in Poker. Some slot machines also allow you to manually stop the reels in a way that can influence the outcome, though I don't think they are common in US casinos. The laws are usually the opposite: games of chance are more tightly regulated than games of skill.
- seanalltogether 7y agoIt's the other way around, if a game can be shown to be skills based, they don't fall under gambling regulations. This is why a lot of gambling type games that issue tickets and target kids are legal.
- smabie 7y agovideo poker, blackjack, and poker can be made to have positive expected value with enough skill. Also roulette I suppose, if you go down the Thorpe and Shannon route of putting a computer in your shoe.
- hobofan 7y agoHow about: "People don't care as much about the TV show anymore, so they have less practice before participating"
- NickBusey 7y agoThe article starts by saying and showing with a graph, that people are now underestimating prices more than they used to. It then ends with this quote: > If you ever find yourself on the game show, the lesson from this research is that whatever you think the price is, your estimate should, as the host says, “come on down.” Is it just me, or is this advice backwards, and based on the data and graph, you should add around 15% to your estimate to not overshoot the 20% average under-estimate?
- altShiftDev 7y agoI caught that too, I think he confused himself at the end there.
- tempestn 7y agoI thought the same thing. I expect it's just a mistake, but it could make sense in a way: it's possible over-estimates of price aren't counted, because any amount over and you lose. So if only successful guesses are averaged, only the negative side of the variance is going to be shown in the graphs. If that's true and in reality variance in both directions is higher than it used to be, you might want to play it safe by reducing your guess, to limit the chances of going over. ... but that would probably still be a good way to lose the game, so most likely the author just got mixed up.
- learnstats2 7y agoFrom the research: 'contestants have increasingly underestimated the true price of the good over time with an increasingly greater magnitude, suggesting that individuals have become more inattentive to prices.' Does it suggest that? Or does it suggest that underestimating is a better strategy?
- unreal37 7y agoArticle mistakes the actual price you pay for something with the manufacturer's (fictional) suggested retail price.
- JonathonW 7y agoWasn't "The Price Is Right" changed several years back specifically to make the game less predictable-- using less common products, for example, or changing the options on cars? https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-perfect-bid-0810/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-p...
- unreal37 7y agoThey used to repeat the same products over and over, and now they try to never repeat a product or do variations of the product at different prices.
- natch 7y agoI loved that a guy was able to win a Tesla because their pricing is so transparent. Yeah the prices change often but at any given time the price you get is the price everyone gets, no haggling.
- mortdeus 7y agoDoesn't inflation directly lead to a decrease in the percentage of the likeliness you are going to be able to hit the correct number for the same kind of products? Also I think Apple and China kinda destroyed the whole "relative value, everything only has a 5% markup compared to their cost" price evaluation model. You know the thing that used to allow people like our Grandparents to be able to afford things like the American Dream on a single poor person's salary. That's my theory anyways. Or maybe people are just getting lazy and not studying as hard as they used to. Or perhaps Bob Barker finally kicked his cocaine habit and no longer needs to keep taking the bribes?
- soperj 7y agoBob Barker hasn't hosted the show in over a decade.
- casefields 7y agoAnd on that note, please spray and neuter your animals!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dr-detroit 7y agoInflation, ya Boomer. You didn't notice because 20 years ago you purchased the last of all the appliances and things you'd need until your death day.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- mdrzn 7y agoIs there any app that allows to track prices in real stores over time? Something like CamelCamelCamel for real stores (not only US) would be great, I'd be down to input prices manually if I could track them over time. Something more than an excel sheet tho.