Retailers have long thought that pricing an item for, say, $49.99 instead of $50 has a positive psychological effect on potential buyers. But a recent study by a business professor at the University of Chicago suggests shoppers may associate odd-priced items with a lack of quality.
Robert Schindler asked 400 members of women`s church groups and PTAs in Chicago`s middle-income suburbs to judge booklets of ads featuring either even-priced items (i.e. $50) or odd-priced items ($49.99). Also, he divided his survey into ”expensive” and ”inexpensive” stores.
When those involved in the study thought they were looking at merchandise from an expensive store, 77 percent judged each even-priced item to be above average. However, only 67 percent of those looking at odd-priced items felt each piece of merchandise was above average.
Furthermore, when expensive stores sold even-priced items, 82 percent of those surveyed thought the overall quality of goods was above-average, whereas just 74 percent felt the same about the quality of odd-priced merchandise in expensive stores.
”Consumers,” Schindler says, ”apparently feel that odd pricing is inconsistent with high quality.”
This holds true only for stores that covet an exclusive image. According to Schindler`s research, odd pricing had no impact on buyers who thought they were shopping from a discount store catalogue.
An interesting aside to the main research came in Schindler`s finding that decreasing the price of an item by a single penny increased by 8 percent the number of people who assumed the merchandise was on sale. This was the case even though none of the ads actually claimed the product was on sale.
EAT TO THE BEAT
Self magazine reports that although listening to loud, fast music may elevate your energy level and aid in the pursuit of exercise or timely completion of household chores, it is not entirely healthy to groove to Bon Jovi over dinner. That`s because the faster the music, the faster you fill up and empty your plate.
Maria Simonson, who directs the health, weight and stress clinic at Johns Hopkins hospitals in Baltimore, has monitored this propensity to eat to the beat, watching in restaurants and cafeterias as people helped themselves to larger portions and ate faster when fast music was piped in. When the music slowed down, so did the diners. They settled for smaller portions, chewed more thoroughly and talked more between bites, Simonson told Self.
Without musical accompaniment people revert to their normal eating patterns.
NEUROTIC MYOPIA
According to W.W. Johnston, author of ”Take Charge!” (Acorn Endeavors, $7.95), worries often plague creative people because they visualize what they fear and try to avoid it.
