There's a radio ad that's been running a lot recently from a broadband company. It includes the statement

"Prices slashed from £15.99 to our lowest ever £14.99".

Call me picky if you like but it seems a pretty small cut for the "prices slashed" claim.

I wouldn't call that "slashing" prices, either!

That reminds me of the way gasoline is priced over here. Instead of saying, for example, $2.25 per gallon, the price is listed as $2.249. It's a stupid marketing ploy that's supposed to make drivers think they're getting a bargain. How stupid do they think we are?

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How stupid do they think we are?

Pretty stupid! They are always cutting corners in advertising. My favorite is their ad for a $60,000 car: a beautiful woman and man getting out and going to a ball. As if that's what you're looking for in a car!

I agree with you Bob; your example is not an example of prices being slashed! I have a friend who won't buy any clothing unless it is at least 30% off. Of course, they probably just increase the price in the first place and then say it is 30% off!

Promotion, like so many other things, is well-researched and the findings of those whose business it is are not simply guesswork and thin-air thinking.

It has been found that most people (not all, of course) fall for the £9.97 pricing ploy (incidentally, the odd 97 is more convincing than 99) and think, when they look, that the item is about £9 - not £10. It works; if it didn't people wouldn't use the device.

So far as the car advertisement is concerned, although people are looking for economy, reliability, comfort, etc., these are now a given in modern cars. So they sell them on some other characteristic - in this case lifestyle.

It's the same with beer; all the mega-brewers promote their beers on their supposed lifestyle advantages - it makes you sexy, or up-to-date, or sporting - what they never do is talk about the taste of the beer. Which, considering it's foul, is probably a good thing.

Marketing is not a simple science; it is very complex and people study it for years. The promotion you experience as customers, like the pricing, packaging and distribution, are all carefully researched and organised so as to maximise the benefits to both supplier and customer.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:

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How stupid do they think we are?

Pretty stupid! They are always cutting corners in advertising. My favorite is their ad for a $60,000 car: a beautiful woman and man getting out and going to a ball. As if that's what you're looking for in a car!

I agree with you Bob; your example is not an example of prices being slashed! I have a friend who won't buy any clothing unless it is at least 30% off. Of course, they probably just increase the price in the first place and then say it is 30% off!

We have a rubbish clothes shop where it appears that happens. You buy a £15 t-shirt for £15, but its label say that it is £50 with 70% off. It's called Officer's Club, and I have never bought anything from there.

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We have a rubbish clothes shop where it appears that happens. You buy a £15 t-shirt for £15, but its label say that it is £50 with 70% off.

In fact, although most people don't realise it, it is is illegal in England to make that claim unless it is true and can be proved to be true. The discounted item must have been sold at the full advertised price for a significant period and in a proper way.

You are within your rights to ask Officer's Club where and when the T shirt was sold at the original price and, if they can't tell you, then you can report the matter to the local trading standards officer who must act. If found guilty the offending trader will receive a substantial fine.

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it is is illegal in England to make that claim unless it is true and can be proved to be true.

Accurate but slightly disingenous.

The law says that the item must have been on sale at one of the branches of a shop at the higher price for a continuous period of at least 28 days in the previous six months. There does have to be a notice explaining where and when the goods were at sale at the higher price (for example "these goods were previously on sale at the higher price in the Inverness Branch from 1st - 28th January") but these notices are often small, poorly sited and easy to overlook. There is no requirement that the branch selling now should previously have sold at the higher price.

I'm no expert but I believe there are also exemptions for certain goods and classes of goods and also some trading circumstances.

That is, as Bob says, the full law. I didn't feel it necessary to give the full details but nothing I said contradicts the truth. The notices which can, as Bob says, be small and poorly sited, but they don't alter the fact of the Law. In fact, where I have seen such notices, they usually seem to be reasonably clear although, quiter frankly, I don't much care about the discounted price; I am concerned only as to whether I think the item is right, and at the right price, for me.

It is true, too that the item sold does not have to have been sold in that particular branch and that, too me, is quite fair. It would often be unreasonable to suggest that every one of maybe 500 branches should be obliged to sell the self-same item at exactly the same price.

But the fact remains, an item cannot be advertsied as having been previously sold at £50 if it was never sold at such a price so it can be quite certain the the Officer's Club sold the T-shirts at the discount mentioned. Whether or not the item is good value, even at the discounted price, is another matter, of course.

The point is that some stores will deliberately run items in a single obscure branch at prices they know no-one will pay for the statutory 28 days (knowing full well that they were unlikely to sell any anyway) in anticipation of a forthcoming nationwide "sale".

Another ploy is to compare the prices not with your own previous prices but with a selected competitor's current prices and to make sure that the competitor in question is whichever one shows you in the most favourable light. This is sometimes accompanied by the "similar product" trick.

Only £5.99 compared with £29.99 at Argos !*


And much smaller text.

*similar product sold at some Argos stores.


As the law fails to define "similar" in this context the stretches of the imagination that some shops get away with are mind boggling.

Hmmm, it sounds as though we have learned our ways from the British!

Those smaller texts are used here too. They advertise these wonderful prices, and then in very small writing it says "for a limited period only." You find out that you can never really get that price. Airline advertisements are especially good at that!

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As the law fails to define "similar" in this context the stretches of the imagination that some shops get away with are mind boggling.

I agree with what you say. However, at least there is a Law (as there are also Laws about misrepresentation of price in such things as airline advertisements). A few years ago there were no such Laws and consumers were quite unprotected against misleading price indication scams.

Now, if you believe the shop is deliberately misleading, you can report it to the local Trading Standards Officer and they WILL be investigated.

We are actually better protected in England than in most other countries, including the USA, against retail scams.

I believe it was Marshall Field, of Chicago, who started the practice of charging (say) $1.95 rather than the round figure of $2.00. But his motive wasn't to induce the customer to buy, by concealing the extra dollar.

His goal was to make it likely that that the customer would not have exact change, thus forcing the sales clerk to go to the cash drawer to make change. Otherwise - that is, if the clerk was given exact change - he might well simply pocket the $2.00, figuring to "put it in the drawer later, when we're not so busy and it's convenient." Somehow the cash, once pocketed, wouldn't always find its way out of the clerk's pocket.

Richard says, "We are actually better ... in England than in most other countries, including the USA."

Why am I unsurprised?