• Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          The CEO decided that clients were smart intelligent people and treated people as adults. Aka, no discounts, no 99 pricing, it just costs what it costs, as low as we can make it, plus our margin.

          JC Penny was already not too well, this helped sink them

          • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            It was less about the .99 pricing and more about “Sale” pricing and ‘coupons’. Retailers will put a pair of pants on “Sale” for 50% off 51 weeks out of the year and people think they’re getting a great deal whereas when it’s not half off, they just don’t buy.

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Poor guy. Tried to do some good in the world and paid the price for it. Nobody ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of the average person.

            • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zip
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              1 month ago

              “Why would I pay $25 for these pair of pants at full price when I could pay $24.99 for those [identical] pants that are half off?! Clearly, that’s the better deal!”

              Hell, could probably even make it $29.99 for the identical pants and people will still go with that because they think they’re paying five more bucks and getting a $60 pair of pants

        • SuperEars@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          This doesn’t meet the bar you want, but my marketing professor called the .99 idea the single greatest thing to come out of marketing in a century.

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            Sounds about right.

            Marketing hasn’t done anything positive for humanity. It is all just to manipulate people into buying shit they don’t need. It is the main driver for the overconsumption.

        • criitz@reddthat.com
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          1 month ago

          You should be able to find various tests and studies of this phenomenon on Google

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      I was watching a PBS documentary about the first humans in the Americas. All the scientists are super cool until you get to the American anthropologist who starts using phrenology to explain why Native American tribes shouldn’t be given repatriation rights, only for a Danish geneticist to say “yeah, this is absolutely a Native American and i am willing to testify to that in any court of law”

      Pseudoscience is still all the rage if it can be used to push a political agenda.