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How do you feel about stores that play psychological tricks with the prices?

stylemeup

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Yesterday which was Boxing Day in Canada I was in Harry Rosen. They had arranged a Canali suit jacket so that the price on it looked like it was $60.99 CAD. I was very happy when I first saw that, thinking it was just a great Boxing Day deal. Then a moment later I realized it was still too good to be true. Upon closer inspection, I realize that $60.99 was for the pocket square in the jacket, and the real pricetag of the jacket was elsewhere and marked as $1099 CAD.

I feel that stores should be up front with their pricing instead of playing psychological tricks like this by deliberately making the pocket square price appear to be the suit jacket price.

How do you feel about stores doing this?

Do you think this trick actually works in making people buy things that they wouldn't have bought otherwise if not for being nailed by the trick?
 

Spatlese

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I'm not a fan of Harry Rosen, but let's be serious here. I doubt they intended to fool anyone into thinking a Canali jacket was to be had for the price of a pocket square.
 

Cary Grant

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Originally Posted by Spatlese
I'm not a fan of Harry Rosen, but let's be serious here. I doubt they intended to fool anyone into thinking a Canali jacket was to be had for the price of a pocket square.

No, of course they didn't.
 

manouche

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Originally Posted by stylemeup
Yesterday which was Boxing Day in Canada I was in Harry Rosen. They had arranged a Canali suit jacket so that the price on it looked like it was $60.99 CAD. I was very happy when I first saw that, thinking it was just a great Boxing Day deal. Then a moment later I realized it was still too good to be true. Upon closer inspection, I realize that $60.99 was for the pocket square in the jacket, and the real pricetag of the jacket was elsewhere and marked as $1099 CAD.

I feel that stores should be up front with their pricing instead of playing psychological tricks like this by deliberately making the pocket square price appear to be the suit jacket price.

How do you feel about stores doing this?

Do you think this trick actually works in making people buy things that they wouldn't have bought otherwise if not for being nailed by the trick?

I torche them
 

stylemeup

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Originally Posted by Spatlese
I'm not a fan of Harry Rosen, but let's be serious here. I doubt they intended to fool anyone into thinking a Canali jacket was to be had for the price of a pocket square.

Maybe most people informed about these things might not have been fooled. Is everyone who goes into Harry Rosen informed though? Or do they get random people going in there a lot too?

Even if they don't get fooled for a second, IMO I still think this is probably done as a psychologal trick. The first thing you see is a $60.99 price hanging out of the jacket. Maybe this plants a psychological seed of a low price?

Kind of like how shady telemarketers would keep asking people questions they already know the answer to. Like: "Is your address ____?", "Do you spell your name _____?" and a whole bunch of other questions to which the victim/customer says "Yes" to. This series of saying "Yes" programs the victim/customer to want to say "Yes" again when the scammy telemarketer offers for them to buy a bill of goods.
 

holymadness

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You thought a Canali jacket would be $61?
eh.gif
 

stylemeup

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For a moment I did. Boxing Day is supposed to be crazy insane deals so I figured that was one of them. I don't know what the actual cost to make a Canali jacket is; I'm very ignorant about clothes. The limited knowledge I have about clothes is exclusively from what I've read on this board since I've joined; I'm still very ignorant about clothes though.
 

amerikajinda

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the psychological tricks I don't like are the ones at Marshall's and TJ Maxx where they bring out fresh merchandise from the back of the store with the "original" price, and also with a red sticker clearance price! So all the clothes on their "clearance" racks have three prices -- the "suggested retail price", the price Marshall's was supposedly charging before the item went on clearance, and then the actual "clearance" price on the red clearance sticker. So a shirt might have a suggested price of $69, a Marshall's price of $39 and then the clearance price of $24.99 -- the psychological part that I don't like is that Marshall's never sold the shirt for $39 -- the first time it hits the floor it sells for $24.99, but Marshall's wants people to think they're getting an extra great deal, when in fact they're getting the price they originally intended to get, and it's not technically on clearance. Damn I hate that.

The way it should work is that the item sits on the floor on sale for weeks and months and then when it doesn't sell, it gets marked down to a clearance price and a red sticker gets slapped on it. But to bring a bunch of clothes to the floor for the first time with the clearance stickers on it from the beginning? That just sucks.
 

teddieriley

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i hardly see this as a psychological trick. it doesn't translate at all that someone primed to purchase a $61 Canali jacket would be tricked into spending almost 20x more. If anything, this would backfire, as it did in your case, and just piss off or disappoint the customer. As a general matter, pricing on jackets aren't the easiest to find. prices is usually under the lapel or a tag tucked under the sleeve.

Unless they actually connected the price tag of the pocket square somewhere directly on the jacket, it's more wishful thinking on your part.

Most retailers layer clothes on a hangar (the front one on the rack). When you reach to find out the price of the $800 outerwear, you grab the price tag of the t-shirt three layers underneath and see a tag for $59. I grabbed the wrong tag, and am just bummed it wasn't as cheap as I was hoping.
 

holymadness

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Canada isn't feeling the effects of the recession yet. Maybe if you're in Ontario, it's a little worse in the industrial sector, but overall we have nothing here comparable to the US. Economists were predicting a robust boxing day, which turned out to be true, so retailers naturally kept their prices fairly high. Most discounts I saw topped out at 50% off, although some electronics stores (like Best Buy) had some ridiculous deals on a few items.

Anyway, for the future, a fully-canvassed Canali jacket with nice fabric and details will always retail in Canada for $1000+. There's hardly any competition here between high-end men's clothiers so there's no reason for them to offer any amazing bargains.

As for psychological 'tricks', no, I don't think that's what was going on. Unless the tag was actually attached to the suit, which I find unlikely, they were probably just trying to create an outfit on a mannequin to show how different elements of their inventory would work together.
 

holymadness

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Originally Posted by amerikajinda
the psychological tricks I don't like are the ones at Marshall's and TJ Maxx where they bring out fresh merchandise from the back of the store with the "original" price, and also with a red sticker clearance price! So all the clothes on their "clearance" racks have three prices -- the "suggested retail price", the price Marshall's was supposedly charging before the item went on clearance, and then the actual "clearance" price on the red clearance sticker. So a shirt might have a suggested price of $69, a Marshall's price of $39 and then the clearance price of $24.99 -- the psychological part that I don't like is that Marshall's never sold the shirt for $39 -- the first time it hits the floor it sells for $24.99, but Marshall's wants people to think they're getting an extra great deal, when in fact they're getting the price they originally intended to get, and it's not technically on clearance. Damn I hate that.

The way it should work is that the item sits on the floor on sale for weeks and months and then when it doesn't sell, it gets marked down to a clearance price and a red sticker gets slapped on it. But to bring a bunch of clothes to the floor for the first time with the clearance stickers on it from the beginning? That just sucks.

I agree with this entirely and I hate it. There is something very alluring about thinking that you are getting an item for 70% off retail value rather than 30%. People (and I'm not magically exempt) are often swayed more by a bargain than by a good price.
 

The False Prophet

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I would assume the PS tag was hanging down so that a customer didn't have to fish in the pocket of the mannequin's jacket to find the price/brand of the PS...
 

voxsartoria

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Hermès plays a fairly good psychological trick about prices for its good stuff, and that trick is: "You can't afford us."


- B
 

stylemeup

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Originally Posted by voxsartoria
Hermès plays a fairly good psychological trick about prices for its good stuff, and that trick is: "You can't afford us."


The Hermes store downtown in my city sells cologne for $150 when the very same bottle of Hermes cologne sells online for $50 or less. I made a post about that on this site before and was told most people who go in there don't care about price, and the cost is paying for real estate (yet strangely, the 'normal' everyman stores downtown don't jack up their prices like that just because they are downtown).
 

Spatlese

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Originally Posted by voxsartoria
Hermès plays a fairly good psychological trick about prices for its good stuff, and that trick is: "You can't afford us."


- B


Actually, I hadn't considered the customer who thought he might be getting a very exclusive $1099 pocket square, only to be disappointed upon closer inspection the correct tag indicated a $60.99 plebeian version.
 

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