Recognise common pricing tactics and how they affect what you buy.
Most shopping offers are built to change how a price feels before you've decided whether you want the thing. A crossed-out number, a countdown, a delivery threshold or a monthly figure each changes what you compare the price against.
Darren, a shopper (all figures here are invented examples), opens a shopping app on a Saturday morning to buy a phone charger for S$23. He sees a pair of earbuds marked down from S$299 to S$179, under a "40% off, today only" banner with a timer counting down. He leaves the app twenty minutes later having spent S$202: S$23 for the charger and S$179 for the earbuds. Each step felt like saving money, but his bank balance said otherwise.
The first price you see sets the scale you use to judge the prices after it. Lesson 2.1 introduced these reference points, and sellers use them on purpose. A crossed-out "original" price is an anchor. Next to S$299, S$179 looks like a S$120 saving. The crossed-out price may never have been a price anyone actually paid. Some products are listed at a high price for a short time, or at a price nobody expects to be paid, so that the "sale" price looks generous. The course "Critical thinking and better decisions", lesson 5.2, "Anchors and confirmation", shows how the first number in a discussion pulls all later estimates in the same way.
The real cost of a discounted item is the sale price. The useful question is whether the item is worth that price compared with the alternatives, and compared with not buying at all.
Countdown timers and "today only" banners add a deadline to the anchor. The deadline cuts the time you spend comparing, and the anchor makes the price look good in the time you have left. Lesson 7.1 shows the same pairing at much larger sums, in property and car sales.
A week before that Saturday, Darren's grocery order came to S$41, with a S$4.99 delivery fee. A message said delivery was free at S$49, so he added a S$12 phone cable he had not planned to buy. Without the cable he would have paid S$41 + S$4.99 = S$45.99. With it he paid S$41 + S$12 = S$53, with free delivery. He saved the delivery fee and spent S$7.01 more. Free delivery thresholds work by changing what you compare: the delivery fee against adding an item, instead of your total spend.
Bundles work in a similar way. "Three for S$10" shown beside "S$3.90 each" makes three feel like the sensible quantity, even if you only wanted one. Buying one costs S$3.90 and the bundle costs S$10. The bundle saving only exists if you would have bought all three anyway.
Limited offers such as "Only 3 left" or "offer ends tonight" rely on loss aversion, from lesson 2.2, by presenting not buying as losing something. What you are told you'll lose is a discount on an item you didn't plan to buy shortly before.
Monthly pricing quotes a large cost as a small regular one, per month, week or day, which makes it easier to accept. A phone at "S$84 a month" on a 24-month plan comes to S$2,016, against an upfront price of S$1,999, so in this example the plan costs S$17 more. A gym at S$99 a month is S$1,188 a year. A course at "less than S$5 a day" can be a four-figure commitment. Splitting a price into periods is not dishonest in itself, and many costs are genuinely paid monthly. The trouble is that people compare the small number with the wrong thing, such as a monthly payment against a dinner out, when the comparison should be with the full total. This is the BNPL effect from lesson 4.1, without the BNPL.
One question works for all of these tactics: whether you would buy at the total with no offer around it. To answer it:
Work out the total you will pay. That means everything: delivery included, every monthly payment added up, and every item in a bundle whether you want it or not. Picture no offer: the same item at that same price, with no crossed-out price, no timer and no threshold. Ask whether you would buy it at that total with no offer. If you would, the offer did no harm. If you wouldn't, the offer made the decision.
Afterwards, Darren put his Saturday purchases through this. He would have bought the S$23 charger anyway. He would not have bought the S$179 earbuds without the anchor and the timer, because his old pair worked fine. So S$179 of the S$202 was spent because of how the prices were framed. He returned the earbuds within the app's return window. The cable from the week before is still unopened in its packaging.
Over the next few days, keep an eye on the offers you're shown. Then pick one, work out its total price, and decide whether you'd pay that price with no offer around it.
Pick one offer you saw this week. Write down the total price and whether you would buy it at that price with no offer attached.
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