Big Sale! (Must buy 4) -- why?

[Melbourne]

@D_Anconia

Feelings don’t have anything to do with it. And there’s pretty much no difference between 99 cents and $1.00.

And yet when when we did it, people clearly thought that $1.99 was $1. They would get to the head of the queue and pull out $1 as payment.

This was engineering students at university, cash transactions: they weren’t dumb and they weren’t rich.

[lingyi]

I know it’s all psychological and silly, but there was something almost magical to go to the $0.99 store and see the last digit of your purchases increment down until you hit that $9.90 mark! The magic just isn’t there when everything is $1.00.

The end to our local $0.99 stores came when they started adding non $0.99 cent items to their inventory. Two tubes of super glue for $0.99 was a no-think bargain, but four tubes for $1.99 called for a thought, “Do I really need four tubes of super glue? I just need one and have then I have one as a spare. But three spares?”.

[lingyi]

I remember when Pay 'n Save first came to Hawaii in the 70’s and regular priced items ended in .97. It was only $0.02 less, but it seemed like such a bargain. Hey, if you bought ten items you’d save $0.20! That was a free pack of gum!

[Patx2]

@Broomstick

In my particular store, if we’re offering, say, 3 crates of soda for $10, then each crate will be $3.34 each so in my store you don’t need to buy three to get the sale price. Phrasing it that way makes it more likely you’ll buy that many, it’s a suggestion many take us up on.

We still make a bit of money if you just buy one - but corporate prefers you buy more.

That, and if we’re trying to get rid of perishable items (the avocado example) we really do want them out of the store. We might even be selling them at cost, because that’s still more than we’d get for them if we let them rot.

I was going to say this, too. At both of my local grocery stores they often advertise something like 3 for $5 but they give the discounted price even if you only buy one or two. Occasionally the ad will say, “must by x number,” but that’s often not the case. However, one store does it with steaks. You must buy so many pounds or packages to get a lower price per pound.

[lingyi]

Just checked our local Target ad and found the following too funny.

Coca Cola 12pks are listed at 2/$10 or $7.99 each. If you go to the online order page, it shows them as $4.99 each. I added one to my cart, shows up as $4.99, but there’s a link to a 3/$10 offer. Increased my order to three and sure enough, it’s $10! I continued and now have 3/$10 vs. the advertised 2/$10.

I’ve seen this glitch when ordering online from Target and other stores before. I’m sure it’s because while almost everything is priced higher in-store because of shipping costs to Hawaii, the online ordering database hasn’t been updated to adjust for Hawaii.