The Psychology Of Pricing That Shapes Every Sale

Drew Thomas  0:05  
Fast fact, your brain associates the color red with urgency, warnings, and clearance events. A price written in red against a light background automatically makes people think the discount is deeper, even if the savings are minor. I'm Drew Thomas, and this is Bank Chats. We can always circle back and start over. Why not?

Jeff Matevish  0:57  
Without it, without it even, yeah. Without even stopping it. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  1:01  
Yeah, no. So, you know, we talk a lot, I think, about you know, we, we obviously this is about banking. You know, the, the, the, the podcast is called Bank Chats, and I think that the original intent behind the show, and it still is one of the key points of the show is to, to explain banking specifically. But I think that we have definitely branched out over the years into some things that are beyond just telling people what a checking account is or what an IRA does, and just trying to give some financial education in general, yeah, to people because quite frankly, there's not a lot of it out there.

Jeff Matevish  1:42  
Yeah, things that you, you guys have asked for, you know, not necessarily like you said, what a, what an IRA...

Drew Thomas  1:46  
That I have specifically?

Jeff Matevish  1:47  
You have not asked for. Our viewers have asked for. Yes, we have asked the viewers what do you want, what you want to hear, and yeah, we've, we've gotten some feedback. And today's topic, it kind of loops into the, you know, the, the time of year where everybody is back to school shopping, so I think that's what sparked this conversation. Is you know because we covered this last year. I think it was last year, right? We talked. We could have been. We, we covered, yeah, we covered it. Yeah, we're going on a few years of this now. So, we did cover back to school shopping and, and how to get your, you know, the best bargains and stuff like that on a previous episode. But so, this one kind of loops into you know the, the psychology of pricing and, and I guess it could be you know depends on if you are a consumer or if you're a business you know if you're a consumer this might be you know what to look out for as a business it could be how to get a few extra bucks from your customer maybe you know. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  2:41  
It, it, it actually is amazing to me. In and I have no idea if this is true in other countries, but in the United States especially, how many seasons that we have that are based around shopping or buying something. Oh yeah, I mean, you know, we have back to school shopping season. We have the holiday shopping season. We have, we have President's Day sales in this, in the, in the winter for buying mattresses. Yeah, we have, I mean it's, it, there's always a shopping season of some sort, or, or to, to, to, to partake in. Yeah, I guess you could say. You know, yeah. Pretty soon we're going to be getting into the fact where you can't use your you, you can't use your regular coffee creamer. You're going to have to buy pumpkin spice coffee creamer because it's that time of year already.

Jeff Matevish  2:41  
I already started buying. We, we bought pumpkin cookies the other day and they're fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  2:41  
The funny thing to me is the, is and I'm I, I know I'm going to ruin it for a bunch of people I guess, but I, I love pumpkin spice stuff. I'm not, I, I think it's, I think it tastes delicious. None of it is pumpkin.

Jeff Matevish  2:41  
It's just spice. It's, it's spice. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  2:41  
It's, it's nutmeg. It is cinnamon and, know.

Jeff Matevish  2:41  
I had a pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  2:41  
You had a pumpkin pie?

Jeff Matevish  2:41  
One of these little you know like little, little guys. You know.

Drew Thomas  2:41  
Oh, okay yeah. But that's the thing. Like when, when they say you like pumpkin spice, like there's, if you actually taste pumpkin, it's not that great.

Jeff Matevish  2:41  
No, no, no by itself, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. You're tasting the cinnamon. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  3:05  
You know. So, yeah. So, back to school shopping season. You, you know you, you nailed it. It's that time of year. And, and but I think this is going to end up being a series of, of, of episodes. Not necessarily that you have to listen to one in order to understand what happens in the next. Yeah, but I think we're going to have at least two, possibly three episodes here on pricing, shopping, things that you can look for, and, and, and I don't know. There's, there's just a lot to cover here. Yeah, and I definitely don't think we can do this in one or even possibly even two episodes. Well, we'll see. Yeah, yeah. So, we're going to start, I think more general is what it seems like here. We're, today we're going to talk a little bit about, like you said, the psychology of pricing. Yes, yeah. And you know what goes into setting prices, whether like you said, if you're a business or not. But so, what are we going to, what, what do you want to start with here? I mean, you know, let me put it to you this way: If you were, if I said to you, "Hey, this, this, this book is, is this, this, this book is, is $4.99 or $5, which is, which is more appealing to you?

Jeff Matevish  5:22  
$4.99? Yeah, by default. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  5:25  
Why?

Jeff Matevish  5:26  
I mean, it's one penny different. Yeah, so it's cheaper.

Drew Thomas  5:32  
It is technically cheaper that is true.

Jeff Matevish  5:33  
Yeah, psychologically, there's, there's a couple factors. Yeah, odd versus even is one. We, we perceive you know even numbers as more of a bargain I think right? Was that?

Drew Thomas  5:48  
Well, I don't know we can get into that, but I mean, but I mean, but I think that's the thing it's like there's even something as simple as the way the prices are, are set yeah that concept of $5 versus $4.99 there's a psychological element to that.

Jeff Matevish  6:00  
There is yeah.

Drew Thomas  6:01  
You know you are being, tricked seems a little bit, it's not, you're not being tricked. I mean, it is. But you're being psychologically manipulated, maybe a little bit. Maybe even that's too strong of a word into believing that, that, that item is cheaper than, than it really is. Yeah. Right. And I think that we've, we've talked about this in the past, and I think, I think that your wife is the same. Like, you know, your this, this concept of like, hey, it was you know how much, how much was that thing? And a lot of times, if you say to your wife like, how much was that? She would say, oh, $4.

Jeff Matevish  6:36  
Yes, or it's yeah, it's, it's usually you won't believe how much I saved today. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  6:42  
You know, but that's, I think that there's a, there, there are a lot of people out there that when they see, when they see $4.99 in their mind, they're paying $4. Not $5.

Jeff Matevish  6:51  
Yeah, because we, we read you know from, from left to right. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  6:54  
So, you completely underestimate what you're paying. Right. Whenever you see that first digit that's lower than. Right, yeah. One penny more would be a five, but that doesn't matter. You only paid $4 for that item, not five.

Jeff Matevish  7:06  
Right, right. I guess yeah. If you, if you, if you bought 100 items, you know, you, you save $1, you know. Yeah. But in your mind, you're, you're saving a heck of a lot more than, than that, that one penny. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  7:17  
And I think that, that also comes to again, you know, we're going to talk psychology here, right? People don't necessarily buy based on information or on objective analysis in a lot of times, and they, they base they, they buy based on emotion, they buy based on perception. They want to be able to tell the story to their friends. Oh, what a great deal I got on this thing! Right, that's what you're buying. You're buying that feeling, that emotional connection to whatever. You're not really buying.

Jeff Matevish  7:51  
You're not buying that product. Yeah, right.

Drew Thomas  7:52  
Yeah, and you're not buying it based on the fact that necessarily it was cheaper. Although sometimes it might play into the fact that oh, I got it on sale. We'll talk about that too. Yeah, but you know, so I'm going to, I'm going to throw some very, very boring words out here just to set this, and then, then we'll, then we'll, then we'll become less boring. So, so Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did work on heuristics and biases that showed that people frequently make judgments using mental shortcuts rather than objective analysis. And their anchoring research demonstrated how arbitrary numbers influence later judgments.

Jeff Matevish  8:32  
So, that, the, that mental shortcut, that's what you're talking about, you know. Right, your four versus five. We even though it's a penny difference, that's your mental shortcut. Hey, four is less than five. That's a better deal.

Drew Thomas  8:43  
Yeah, yeah. And so, I guess the thing is, like, would you rather spend, would you rather take a shortcut, or would you rather have to spend 20 minutes evaluating every, every purchasing decision that you make?

Jeff Matevish  8:55  
Well, if it was my brain, you'd be spending 20 minutes evaluating every purchase you make.

Drew Thomas  8:59  
Yeah, mine probably too, a little bit, but I sometimes I spend more than that. But, but I guess it depends on what you're buying, right? If I, if I'm researching a new computer, I'm going to spend a lot more time evaluating it than if I'm buying, I don't know, a McDonald's value meal. 

Jeff Matevish  9:14  
I think that's huge. Yeah, if, if it's something that you're going to be using for a long time, I'm the same way. I mean, I'm doing research on it, I'm going back and forth in my head for hours, days, weeks, months, whatever it is. Yeah. Determining, okay, is this and, and, and the price too. I mean, if it's something that that is higher price, I'm definitely going to spend a lot more time deciding if this is the right product or not. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  9:37  
Now let me ask you this: Does that, that brings up a good point. Like you're doing a lot of research.

Jeff Matevish  9:44  
Yeah, right.

Drew Thomas  9:45  
But for a lot of people, more information doesn't necessarily equate to a better purchasing decision. It can.

Jeff Matevish  9:55  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  9:56  
But it can also kind of become information overload. Yeah, yeah, and so then you kind of get that sort of decision stagnation where you can't make a decision because there's too many conflicting variables and you can't decide which one of them is, yeah you can't prioritize things.

Jeff Matevish  10:11  
Right, right, well luckily I mean and we just had this conversation a similar conversation before we started this. Now we have tools that, that can help with that so now I know I've used AI to, to help me like go through pros and cons between two different products, you know, kind of takes a little bit of that, that goes through the weeds and, and does the, lays everything out nicely for you at least, yeah, so that you can you're, you're making the decision, but you know it makes it a little bit easier sometimes.

Drew Thomas  10:37  
Yeah, yeah. I think that one of the examples, and I, there's a there's an author, her name is Nancy Harhut, and I was I was fortunate enough to get to see her speak at a conference. And one of the things that she pointed out whenever she was demonstrating that more information doesn't always necessarily lead you to a better buying decision, and it's on something that you probably see at least a couple of times a week.

Jeff Matevish  11:00  
A product that we see a couple times a week?

Drew Thomas  11:04  
You could call it a product, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  11:05  
Okay. Oh, I don't know.

Drew Thomas  11:09  
Fast food menus.

Jeff Matevish  11:10  
Okay.

Drew Thomas  11:12  
So, what about 10-20, years ago? They started putting calorie counts. Yeah. On fast food menus. Yeah, yeah. Thinking that more information, telling people that this burger or this set of fries or this whatever chicken sandwich had your entire daily allotment of calories in it.

Jeff Matevish  11:32  
I thought that was a mandatory thing. I thought...

Drew Thomas  11:34  
It is mandatory. Okay. But the idea was that more information would help influence people to make better purchasing decisions. Okay, right, and in reality, it makes no difference whatsoever.

Jeff Matevish  11:45  
No, the price makes the biggest difference because I'm going to buy that dollar burger, $2 burger. I'm not going to buy that $7 salad. You know, maybe.

Drew Thomas  11:52  
You know that's true, but it also doesn't really deter people from buying fast food at all. Yeah, right. Either, you know, like, and by the way, sometimes that salad is no, no, no better calorie wise. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that constant, the concept that, that more information like you know oh well now that I know that that burger's you know 800 calories in one cheeseburger, now I'm now maybe I'll, I'll elect to buy something else. It doesn't make, it makes like no difference at all. And there have been some limited studies that have suggested that it has had the opposite effect. That people being told, hey, what you're doing is unhealthy, makes people more sort of like, I'm going to do it anyway.

Jeff Matevish  12:21  
Yeah, or that hey, that's 800 calories. I should be full for longer, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, theoretically. You know.

Drew Thomas  12:40  
The other thing that she pointed out was that in terms of information, if you, if you I, I don't do how can I put this? Let me ask you this: Do you think that you could make better buying decisions today than you could last year? We're only talking like a year's difference here, so I mean, like...

Jeff Matevish  12:57  
I'd say yes.

Drew Thomas  12:59  
Based on what? Based on the fact there's more information available to you, or something else?

Jeff Matevish  13:04  
More information. I'm, I'm one year older. Hopefully, one year wiser. You know. Okay. Um. Yeah. I, I, and like I had mentioned, you know, tools. You know, to, to help.

Drew Thomas  13:13  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  13:14  
You weed through all the information, but yeah, I'd say that I'm, I'm more equipped to, you know, do that this year than last year. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  13:21  
So, that's so that's good. So, so statistically, you're in the minority.

Jeff Matevish  13:26  
Oh, okay.

Drew Thomas  13:27  
Statistically, people say that they don't really feel like they're any better equipped to make decisions today than they would than they would have been like 2, 3, 5, years ago. Okay. Based solely on how much information was available to them because a lot of people will say, well, you know, I, I could read magazines, I could watch TV, I could read Consumer Reports, or I could do, you know, internet-based cost comparisons and stuff like that back then. But what the, the crazy thing is, is that the internet is now comprised of this is as of 2025, 181 zettabytes of information.

Jeff Matevish  14:06  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:07  
Which is equivalent approximately to 250 billion DVDs, and it's exponentially growing. They, they estimate that about 90% of the information that is currently available to you was put on the internet within the last two years.

Jeff Matevish  14:25  
Yes. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:26  
Which is crazy.

Jeff Matevish  14:27  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:28  
So, I don't know that I'm 90% better at being able to make purchasing decisions than I was two years ago. Yeah. Because I guess by I guess maybe...

Jeff Matevish  14:36  
You know you used to use your gut more for, for purchasing. Like I maybe didn't regret a purchase, you know, back then when you didn't have the information. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:47  
Sometimes I think too, like having more information just leads you into like a, I so I used to work in sales, and people used to come in, and I worked in sales in the late '90s, early 2000s when computers were still novel enough that people were buying them pretty, pretty regularly, and you know, and upgrading them pretty regularly.

Jeff Matevish  15:06  
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  15:06  
And I remember people would come in and they would say to me, "Well, when's the best time to buy a computer? You know, was it now like around back to school season? You know, is this the best time to buy a computer, or should I wait for Christmas and Black Friday sales, or should I wait, and, and a lot of the time the, the question was, well, when are the new ones coming out? Like, is should I wait?

Jeff Matevish  15:25  
Doesn't matter.

Drew Thomas  15:26  
To buy the next, the next best thing. And I'm and I used to tell people all the time, the best time to buy a computer is now. And if you come in tomorrow, I'm going to tell you the best time to buy a computer is now. Right, right, yeah. You know, it's, it's just it moves...

Jeff Matevish  15:35  
Obsolescence is yeah I mean planned obsolescence is, is huge in, in, in that kind of you know that industry yeah, yeah, yeah as soon as something comes out the, the next one comes out the next day and yeah what you bought for you know $1,000 is now obsolete.

Drew Thomas  15:55  
Yep, yep so um, so let's go into some of these things in a little bit more detail.

Jeff Matevish  16:00  
Okay uh.

Drew Thomas  16:01  
Because we've touched on a couple of things, but I think some of these things warrant some additional detail. So, tell me a little bit about charm pricing.

Jeff Matevish  16:08  
Charm pricing. So, that, that charm, that that's that, that is the, the, the term that we or for, for the pricing that we were talking about. That's your $3.99 versus $4. Okay. And it was that, that perceived difference between a short or a small, a small difference in pricing.

Drew Thomas  16:08  
Okay.

Jeff Matevish  16:08  
So, research found that, that effect is strongest when prices are closer together. So, you're $3.99 versus $4. Okay. And when consumers are comparing alternatives directly.

Drew Thomas  16:41  
So, two different types of candy versus candy and a yeah TV.

Jeff Matevish  16:46  
Yeah, it could be your, your name brand versus your, your, your store brand. You know.

Drew Thomas  16:51  
Oh, okay. I got you, and we could talk about that on a lot on another episode of just talk about store brands. Oh yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, when I was a kid, the store, like generic stuff, was the, the white can with the black block lettering, and it just said cheese.

Jeff Matevish  17:11  
Oh, really?

Drew Thomas  17:12  
And you had no idea what kind of cheese was, or it said like flour. Oh, you know, and it was just now a lot of your, your, your...

Jeff Matevish  17:21  
They look very similar. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  17:22  
I mean, there's a lot of well, there's a lot of marketing put behind making the generic stuff look appealing, right, right, enough for people to want to buy it, right, right. But yeah, you're right. We can, we can go into that, you know, in, in greater detail. But I guess you know, and we've kind of the, the, the question that sort of was brought up was, are consumers really being fooled by that penny, or are they using an efficient mental shortcut? And, and I would say they're not really being fooled, but I also wouldn't call it an efficient mental shortcut because you're, you're usually shortchanging yourself. I didn't do that.

Jeff Matevish  17:56  
Yeah, usually it's, it's so minute that it doesn't really matter, but.

Drew Thomas  18:01  
Yeah, but, but to go back to our point before, if you're mentally calculating the lower dollar value, and then you multiply that over a trip to the grocery store where you're buying 50 items, now all of a sudden you're, you're, you're, you're mentally calculating a bill that's $50 less than what you're actually paying.

Jeff Matevish  18:20  
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  18:21  
So, I don't know if it's a very efficient mental shortcut at that point. Maybe it is. Yeah, but.

Jeff Matevish  18:26  
And that, that plays into the that odd and even pricing that we had talked about earlier too, where odd, odd prices equate to, and I was I was wrong earlier, odd prices we perceive odd prices as more of a bargain, whereas even prices are more quality or luxury, so $999 versus $1,000, $1,000 is more luxurious or higher quality than $999.

Drew Thomas  18:51  
So, it's not necessarily, so I'm curious, like, so does $800 feel? Yeah, I guess it kind of does. Like I'm using, I'm doing a personal gut check. I think $800 feels a little bit more, I don't know, lavish than $799.

Jeff Matevish  19:05  
I think for the, the large, the, the, the larger numbers, it's you're reading the number in totality, like $999. Well, $800 seems just as luxurious as $700, I guess. Even though you know starts with an odd versus an even number. Yeah. Um. So, I think for those larger numbers, the you know the $999. It's the 99 at the end. It's in the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  19:31  
I've also found for me personally that sometimes I'm definitely influenced by this, just because $999, in a weird way feels more expensive to me than $1000, even though you're adding a completely extra digit. Yeah, the one and three zeros just for some reason feels less expensive than $999. It feels like you're like maxing out the nines on a calculator, yeah, it just feels expensive. I don't know, kind of weird.

Jeff Matevish  20:04  
Yeah, I like the round numbers because you know if, if I have a coupon or some discount, it's a little easier to do the math in my head on, on a round number like that as opposed to a $999.

Drew Thomas  20:16  
Yeah, and we and you know honestly, it's funny that you bring that up because that was one of the things I was going to suggest we talk about when we talk about shopping in your stores because a lot of times you shop in stores and they say oh 25% off 30% off but if you're not good at doing that quick math yeah you, you may not necessarily know and there are definitely stores now that actually put up signs that say like 30% off and then it'll have examples of all the prices so that you can see what the actual price is.

Jeff Matevish  20:39  
Yeah right, right, right, yeah you see that a lot with like clothing stores and stuff like that. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  20:43  
Yeah, but they definitely didn't used to do that. Like you used to have to do the math in your own head.

Jeff Matevish  20:47  
Which is, which is like really ironic because now you have a calculator in your pocket at all times. You know, you don't have to do the mental math at all ever.

Drew Thomas  20:53  
Yeah, not if you don't really want to. I mean, like, all right. So, so what other kind of psychological pricing tricks can we, can we discuss today?

Jeff Matevish  21:02  
You, you kind of just brought up anchoring, which is like, was a certain price now a different price. Yeah. So, we see you know if something was $799 versus was $1,299 now $799, which was more appealing? Psychologically your second one is, is more appealing.

Drew Thomas  21:23  
Okay, so, so rather than just telling me that the price is $799, right? You're telling me it was $1,299, now $799, right?

Jeff Matevish  21:32  
Right, and my, and my wife falls for that. That's the one that she falls for all the time. Guess how much I saved because she'll, you know, she'll take that, that first number and, and take whatever she you know whatever she paid and, and do the math and a lot of times that's artificially inflated you know especially like before a sale or something you know they, they mark that up like crazy.

Drew Thomas  21:51  
Yeah I would argue that, that happens a lot on, I'm not trying to call anybody out, I'm just saying it happens a lot on a lot of your like your, your, your big online retailers yeah your, your big box stores, things like that, especially Black Friday sales and stuff, where the price of something might have been cheaper three weeks ago.

Jeff Matevish  21:51  
Right.

Drew Thomas  22:04  
But then they raised the price for three weeks so that on Black Friday they could reduce it from the retail price, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  22:18  
Or they take the, the, the max price that it's ever been. You know, it was at one point, you know, they don't say, yeah, you know, at what point it was this ridiculous price.

Drew Thomas  22:27  
Yeah, I think discount stores like we used to have a place in town, well, it wasn't just in town, but we used to, there used to be a store out there called Value City. Yeah, and Value City.

Jeff Matevish  22:35  
Oh, we loved Value City.

Drew Thomas  22:36  
Oh yeah, we did too. I mean, we shopped at Value City all the time.

Jeff Matevish  22:38  
Buy a suit and lawn furniture. The same store. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  22:41  
And you know, but they always had that was ticketed price, or, or they would have a something on there that said like they would have like the original store tag on it, like if they bought, if they bought out a closeout deal from some other major store like Sears at the time or something, they would leave the Sears price tag on it that had a price, and then they would have another tag on it that had the Value City price.

Jeff Matevish  23:08  
Right, right, right. I think like, like Ross and TJ Maxx and stuff. They, they kind of do something similar. Ollies does something similar sometimes. Yeah, you know, you know they're always advertising you know the what you know, their price versus our price type thing.

Drew Thomas  23:20  
Yeah, yeah, their price. That's what I was, that's what I was mentally searching for. Their price versus our price. Yeah, and I think that, so what it says is that you know, from a psychological point of view, you're not actually evaluating the price. You're evaluating the difference between the two prices. Yeah, yeah. So, you're saying, wow, $1,299 to $799. I'm saving $500.

Jeff Matevish  23:40  
Yes, it's the perceived savings. Right, right.

Drew Thomas  23:42  
Not I'm still spending $800. Right, right. So, that that's, that's, that's kind of where they get you. There's another, there's another sort of trick that, that involves that sort of anchoring that, that we discussed briefly. I think the other day was movie like, like popcorn or drink sizes when you go somewhere, like this notion that a small soda is $2, a medium soda is $5, and a large soda is $6. Right, right. The medium soda, they will, they are not trying to sell you a medium soda. They're what they're doing is they're saying, well, they're getting you to do that perceived value and calculate the difference between prices, and saying, well, why would I ever buy a medium for $5 when I can get a large for $6? Right, right. So, that's the goal. The goal is to get you to go from the $2 small to the $6 large by putting some medium in there that makes you that tricks you, you know, and, and in some cases you might be able to buy two smalls, which would be equivalent to a large for $4, but it doesn't matter because you already, they already got you to buy the $6 large, right?

Jeff Matevish  24:52  
Right, or, or a store that, that charges you a lot of money, but then gives you a, a product or, or a service for, for a real steep discount. I was at Costco over the weekend. Okay, same thing. You, you pay $300 on groceries, you know, because you're buying everything in bulk. Yeah, yeah. But then you, you know you have dinner for you know $8 for a family of four in the food court. Yeah, you know you get a hot dog for $1.50 and a piece of pizza for $2 and a soda for 79 cents. I don't, I, I can't remember the last time I saw anything on any menu that was under $1 because there's no dollar menu anymore. Oh sure, value menus, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, same thing.

Drew Thomas  25:29  
Which one? Which one is it? Costco or is it Sam's Club that has like the $1 hot dog and they refuse to change the...

Jeff Matevish  25:34  
Costco. It's like $1.50. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  25:36  
Yeah. Yeah. I was saying, and it's been that price for such a long time that that they refuse to change it, even though they're actually losing money on the hot dog at this point, they're, they're, they're keeping it at that price.

Jeff Matevish  25:44  
Right, right, because they're making so much money in, in the rest of the store.

Drew Thomas  25:48  
Yeah, I don't know if I should talk about. I'll save this. I'll save the anecdote I'm thinking of for the, for the, for the in shop, in store pricing episode.

Jeff Matevish  25:57  
Okay, I have another one for in-store too with free samples. Okay.

Drew Thomas  26:02  
Yeah. Yeah. So, so we'll save that. Yeah, we'll save that. So, I, I have, I have another good example of for, for in-store shopping stuff to talk about. See, this is, this is, this is, this is called foreshadowing. Yeah. We're getting you interested in the next episode so that you come back and listen to it too. And this is free, so we're not even getting you to like pay us or anything. This is just you, you know, you get all this for nothing. Yeah, no, that's your perceived value.

Jeff Matevish  26:28  
Yes, for free.

Drew Thomas  26:31  
Okay. So, talking about talking about perceived value, I think that kind of leads pretty easily into the next thing, which is this, this concept of what they call innumeracy or framing, and it's, and it's this, this concept why we're obsessed with, with sales. So, talk, talk a little bit about that.

Jeff Matevish  26:50  
That, that so that, that innumeracy refers to the fact that we're not always great at math or we don't want to think about math. So, if you have a pizza shop that says buy two pizzas, get them both 50% off, or buy one get one free. Which one are you going to choose?

Drew Thomas  27:10  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  27:11  
You're going to choose the one that says free because for first we all like free. Everybody likes free, but there's no math involved.

Drew Thomas  27:17  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  27:18  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  27:18  
Yeah. You're right. I mean, or, or the I think the first part, the, the concept of I'm getting something for nothing. Yeah, yeah. Even when you're technically not, and I, I remember somebody doing that at a when I was younger, I knew somebody who worked for the Humane Society, and they were selling like, they were selling like little cat toys and stuff like that at the, at the thing like so when you adopted a cat you would you know buy little cat toys sure yeah, yeah right to take home. And they had them there and for the longest time they were I think they were like I'm going to show my age I think they were like 50 cents okay, for like, for like this cat toy whatever and they found that like occasionally people would buy one you know, but it was they, they did it. They changed the sign to two for $1.

Jeff Matevish  28:08  
Ah.

Drew Thomas  28:08  
Right. The and all of a sudden they were selling cat toys like crazy because it was this, it was this nice round number. They didn't have to like dig for change back whenever people paid with change. Yeah, yeah. And, and there was this, oh, I have $1 on me. Oh, and I get two for $1. That was a great deal, right? Same price, right? But they like tripled their sales by just changing the sign from buy one for 50 cents to getting two for $1.

Jeff Matevish  28:31  
That's interesting, yeah. Because you sometimes see in stores like, or you have to do some mental math because you, you, it's you know buy, buy one for this price, or buy four for you know, you know a different price, and you're trying to decide, okay, am I actually getting any money off of that deal, or are they just doing the math for me and saying, hey, if you buy four of these, you know, is that a marketing thing, or you know, I'm actually getting a deal?

Drew Thomas  28:58  
Yeah, some additional foreshadowing, they're not just doing the math for you. Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that too. Okay, so what else do we have for, for psychological sales tactics that we can talk about here?

Jeff Matevish  29:14  
We have artificial time constraints, which is scarcity, urgency, and fear of missing out.

Drew Thomas  29:21  
Of course, there is. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  29:22  
So, just like we've kind of talked in the past on, on scams and stuff, these scammers that, that try to get you to act fast because something's going to happen. It's the same thing with an opposite for, for marketing or for, for you know for stores. You know, they want there's a sale, it's a limited time, or there's a limited quantity. There's always some sort of urgency to get you to not think and just buy. Yeah. So, very similar. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  29:48  
Yeah. I, I completely identify with that. I mean, my wife loves to go to and, and I always feel like obligated to say this, I'm not trying to call anybody out. I'm just we're using real world examples here. And, and, and, and quite frankly, in a weird way, we're giving you credit because it works. It works, right? So, my, my, my wife loves going to Bath and Body Works. Yep, right. And they a lot of times, and it's, here's the thing that gets me. They all they have these limits on stuff, and sometimes like the limits are crazy high. Like they'll have like a sale on hand sanitizers, and they'll have limit 16. Yeah, you're like limit 16, but yet people will buy 16 of those things.

Jeff Matevish  30:34  
Yes, you know we gave out those little hand sanitizers as, as little like take homes for, for our for baby shower because we oh yeah, yeah, yeah it is here thanks for coming take a hand sanitizer on your way out you know because yeah we've and then yeah you buy them and you never use them. We have we have a tote a tote of, of soaps from Bath and Body Works okay every time there's a sale we get more. Yeah I don't use them. My wife is the only one that uses them. How much soap can she use? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, some of them are for gifts for other people and, and whatnot. Sure, why not? Yeah. But yeah, they're doing a great job at their at their marketing. Yeah, they really are.

Drew Thomas  31:13  
Yeah, and, and honestly, that they have an advantage too, which again, you know, leans into that first thing we talked about, where there's always some buying season, yeah, right, yeah. But they, they, they can lean into that hard because it's like, oh well, I don't want to use the, the, the falling leaves scent because it's spring, so I have to have the morning rain cloud scent instead. And then what happens to the falling leaves ones that you have in your closet? I'll wait and save them for fall. Yeah, yeah, right. When does fall come around? I'm not going to use those. There's new scents out that I want to go buy. Right, right. So, there's yeah, there's yeah.

Jeff Matevish  31:52  
And they're the limited time thing. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, all the time. I mean, they, they had a sale recently on like retro scents, you know, and, and my wife's favorite scent was one of these retro scents that hasn't been on the market for years and years and years type things. So, you got to buy all of them, and because you don't know when they're going to come back again. McDonald's does the same thing with the McRib. Everybody flocks to McDonald's around you know November to get the McRib. Yeah, because it's for a limited time. Even though they know they're going to get it every year at the same time, it's like the latest and greatest.

Drew Thomas  32:18  
It might be the last time. This might be, you know, yeah, yeah. Shamrock Shake.

Jeff Matevish  32:27  
Shamrock Shake.

Drew Thomas  32:28  
Shamrock Shake, same thing, you know, yeah, totally. And then I've also seen this. This is also something that I've been noticing more online, and I don't know if it's just that I'm picking up on it more, or they're using it as a tactic more is the only so many left. Yes, I've seen that a lot on, on like online shopping these days, where I'm looking at something and then it'll say like only three left, you know. Yeah, and you don't know if there's really only three left. Is there only three left today because you haven't gotten a new shipment yet? Is there only three left because it's been discontinued. Yeah. But even just that simple question that's in your mind makes you think, well, maybe I should buy it now because there's only three left.

Jeff Matevish  33:07  
I think airlines have even gotten like accused of like manipulating that data based on how many times you've searched a specific destination, like only five seats left at this price. You know. Yeah. And you use a VPN or use a different computer or something like that, and that that number changes. You know, yeah, yeah. You never know.

Drew Thomas  33:24  
Yeah, and there's you're right. I mean, some of it is, some of it is a little conspiracy theory-ish. Like it's, it's anecdotal evidence. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  33:31  
It would make sense type thing. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  33:33  
Yeah. You know, I wish there was, and it's funny, like people have done studies to determine, for example, whether or not airlines are truly manipulating the price based on how often you ping their website, and statistically speaking, they have not found a strong any strong evidence that that's happening.

Jeff Matevish  33:57  
Oh, really?

Drew Thomas  33:58  
However, the fact that, the fact that airlines are really particularly good at this is this whole dynamic pricing thing, which again we will talk about in one of these future episodes. The prices are changing all the time. Yeah. So, there's sometimes this sort of confirmation bias where the website is adjusting or the airline, or whatever is adjusting the, is adjusting the price every single day.

Jeff Matevish  34:25  
Based on how many people are viewing.

Drew Thomas  34:27  
Based on the hundreds of 1000s of people that are viewing that, that particular thing, right, right. But you only know you, you only know your actions. Yeah. So, when you check it out today, you're not thinking about the fact that there are 300,000 other people checking out that same flight today.

Jeff Matevish  34:42  
Yeah, that's true.

Drew Thomas  34:43  
Then you come back tomorrow, and it's a higher price. Now you think, oh my God, they're tracking my movements and they're raising the price on me. Yeah, when in reality, it's probably because 300,000 other people checked that price yesterday, and now they're going, hey, there's a pretty big demand for this. We're going to raise the price, so they are raising the price, but they're not raising. Because of you, they're raising it because of you and your 300,000 friends.

Jeff Matevish  35:05  
So, then how does it work when they say like your best days to, to book a flight are I don't know Wednesday and Thursday or something like that. Like a specific day is the best day to book because the prices are going to be low. Wouldn't you think that everybody's going to look at the that, that website? Yeah, you would think, and, and raise the price. So, yeah, I don't know.

Drew Thomas  35:23  
Which also, which also begs the question, are, are they saying it that way, and their intent, maybe it's their version of a sale. You know, they know that a bunch of people are being told, hey, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best day to get a price. Yeah, you lower the price by $10 a ticket, but you raise your ticket sales by 300%.

Jeff Matevish  35:39  
Yeah, that could be. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  35:41  
So, now all of a sudden on Tuesdays and Thursdays you're dealing in volume, not in quantity. Right. You know, or whatever. So, I don't know. Yeah. That's a good question. Um. Yeah. So, okay. Um. What else? What else do we got here? We got luxury. We got sort of, you sort of touched on this earlier. This concept of like doing the opposite of these like luxury brands that...

Jeff Matevish  36:02  
Yeah they were they'll do the round numbers not ending in 99, ending in zeros okay that, that makes you think that the, the product or the service is more luxurious or higher quality restaurants do that quite often higher end restaurants they'll, they won't do a like the cents on, on a price. They'll do you know something is $37 and not $36.99. Yeah, they won't put a the, the they don't put the decimal.

Drew Thomas  36:32  
They don't put the decimal points either, sometimes.

Jeff Matevish  36:34  
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, they don't put the pre decimal points. Yeah, and they don't put the price tag or the price symbol. Oh, money, dollar sign. Okay, yeah.

Drew Thomas  36:40  
So, it just says like filet mignon 40. Yeah, yeah, and you're like 40 calories? $40?

Jeff Matevish  36:41  
Ooh, I will take that for market price. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  36:50  
Oh, market price. That's another one. You know, I mean that, that gets you because you don't know what that's going to be. Yeah. And you know, I and that's that goes back to that old adage. I mean, I you know the you know well if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Jeff Matevish  37:07  
I rarely buy anything market price. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  37:09  
Yeah. Whenever you, whenever you see you know like being close to the shore is notorious for that because you get the sea bass. Yeah, market price. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  37:10  
Any seafood. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  37:22  
Things like that. You know, like fresh caught this morning, but you know they only caught two, so now it's $5 more than it was yesterday. Supply and demand. Right, right, right. No, but you don't know that. It's just market price. Right. You know. Um, but I do think that you have a point with there is the reverse sort of attitude, and I think I immediately think of the Ritz Carlton whenever I think of situations like this. Like you have the concept of okay, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go to the, the complete extreme, but like let's, let's talk about like a you have a say a Days Inn or a Hampton Inn or you know something like that. That's sort of like your what would be considered on a travel app to be a two-star hotel, right? It's clean, it's comfortable. You get a bed, you get a TV, you get free breakfast or something maybe the next day. You get complimentary free Wi-Fi that can steal a bunch of your data when you connect to it. Yeah, you know, but in reality, then you go to the Ritz Carlton, right, or one of these higher end hotels, and all of a sudden, you still get a bed, you still get a TV, you still get free Wi-Fi that'll steal your data. You get, but yet all of a sudden, you're paying instead of $200 a night, you're spending $1,000 a night. Like, what are you really getting for that? Well, you're getting the experience, I guess, and you're getting the ability to tell your friends that you stayed in a

Jeff Matevish  38:47  
Ritz Carlton. Yeah, yeah, that's you know perceived value. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  38:50  
But do you truly sleep better? I don't know. I don't think you do.

Jeff Matevish  38:54  
Yeah, I mean, unless you're, you're spending your entire day in that, in that hotel room, you know.

Drew Thomas  38:59  
Well, yeah, that's you. You make a very good point. If you, if you actually, if you're traveling and you're the type of person that actually wants to see the sights and, and explore the area that you're traveling to, you're probably not spending all that much time in your hotel room at all. Yeah, and you're paying for the entire day. I mean, you can come and go as you please. You're paying for the entire day, but in reality, how much time are you actually in that room? It's a fraction of what you're actually paying for.

Jeff Matevish  39:25  
Right, right.

Drew Thomas  39:28  
And, and now you can't even steal the stuff anymore because they just charge your hotel. Not that I'm advocating that, but, but I mean that that used to be sort of the, the, the, the gimmick too was like, well, I got my money back because I got a free robe, or I got a free, you know, I got I got 16 bars of soap, you know, like there were, and now they, they have everything like sort of locked down in the shower where you can't take anything off the wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  39:54  
They've gotten pressure sensors on all of the, the minibar and all of that kind of snacks. Oh yeah! I remember previous job me and my coworker went to, we were in Chicago for a convention. Yeah, and we had bumped that tray that held like the Voss water and all of the fancy snacks and everything.

Drew Thomas  40:16  
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  40:17  
And it shifted a bottle of water, and we got charged for it because it changed the like where the orientation of the bottle changed the pressure of that pressure sensor or whatever it is. Yeah, we got charged for a bottle of water that we didn't even drink.

Drew Thomas  40:29  
Wow.

Jeff Matevish  40:29  
Yeah, it's very sensitive, I guess. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  40:31  
I get, I wonder why they would do it that way as opposed to just waiting for somebody to come in the next day and like evaluate what was missing.

Jeff Matevish  40:38  
I guess they didn't want you swapping it out or maybe you opened it and poured, you know, you drank the good water and you put in, you know the, the, the...

Drew Thomas  40:48  
Tap water out of this bathroom sink and refilled it or something. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I guess that's a possibility.

Jeff Matevish  40:53  
But yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Drew Thomas  40:54  
That is pretty crazy. That there was something else that that, that Nancy Harhut talked about when it came to this, this concept of like the, the, the luxury or, or whatever is this idea that we tend to equate, it goes and it kind of ties into that whole mental shortcut thing that we talked about too when evaluating pricing we tend to evaluate things that are tough to quantify based on time and effort as proxies for actual price evaluation. So, those are a lot of like complicated words to say that basically, if we think you spent more time or put more effort into something, we think it's more valuable. Yeah, even if it may not be.

Jeff Matevish  41:35  
Right.

Drew Thomas  41:36  
And so you see examples where, so one, one good example is have you gotten those things in your mail from like the local window company that looks like handwritten? Yeah, yeah. It's this mental construct that like oh it was...

Jeff Matevish  41:55  
Personal, right.

Drew Thomas  41:56  
Yeah, and it wasn't something that came off of a printer that somebody printed out 12,000 of these. Right, it was handwritten for me, and now I feel obligated that oh, they put this effort and time into this. Maybe I should call them after all.

Jeff Matevish  42:10  
I do spend an extra few seconds looking at it before I throw it away. But yeah.

Drew Thomas  42:14  
Yeah, yeah. They've, they've even done something like very simple things. They've done studies where if you are in a restaurant and the waitress puts a little thank you and a little, like hand drawn heart or a smiley face on your bill before she brings it back to you, that you're inclined to tip more.

Jeff Matevish  42:32  
Yeah, I could see that. That makes sense. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  42:34  
You know

Jeff Matevish  42:35  
A little personal touch. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  42:36  
You know, because we, we evaluate this. Oh, I got, but you could have had the same exact service experience without that, but when at the end of your meal you're presented with this little like smiley face and a thank you, handwritten thank you, you're like, oh well, yeah, she really did do a good job. I'm going to throw an extra.

Jeff Matevish  42:54  
Yeah, you appreciated me, you know, so I'm going to appreciate you a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  42:57  
And there have been studies that show that, that waiters and waitresses can increase their tips by like 15-20% just by putting a little note on the, on the, on the bill.

Jeff Matevish  43:07  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:08  
Which is crazy.

Jeff Matevish  43:09  
Then yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:12  
Handwritten apologies. That's another thing. Like if you, if you work with a company and the company makes a mistake or something like that, rather than, rather than a, a form letter or something like that, having a little handwritten apology that says you know we apologize for the mistake or whatever can make a huge difference in how easily you are or how willing you are maybe to forgive a mistake.

Jeff Matevish  43:32  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:33  
With a particular company.

Jeff Matevish  43:34  
Customer retention or whatever yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:36  
So, you know again going back to what you said at the beginning you know this is, this is from the consumer point of view, but if you are a business.

Jeff Matevish  43:42  
These are tips that you can take to you know maybe better your business a little bit. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:46  
Yeah. I mean, 100% Yeah. So, okay. So, so let's talk a little bit about what businesses might be able to learn. There's, there's a little section here I think that we can talk about that are specific to businesses and what they can pull away from this. So...

Jeff Matevish  44:01  
Testing prices was, was the first one. Okay, so I mean, run your sales. So, put, put a product on for you know, I don't know the, the $4, and then the next week run it for $3.99. See if you get more sales one week versus the next week.

Drew Thomas  44:18  
Yeah, and track the data. I think that's the important thing. You can't, the, the whole concept behind testing means that you have to actually record the results so that you can go back and, and, and look at it. And maybe that goes back to that thing I said earlier, where we have a lot of these gut check experiences and these sort of anecdotal things, but we don't really know. Like we don't have it written down. That yes, you know. Every time I did this, my sales went up. Yeah, yeah, right. So, definitely write things down and then track the data after the fact. Yeah, don't, don't make assumptions necessarily about it. Use A/B testing. You know, if you have multiple locations of for your store. You know, maybe you, maybe you run two different hair salons or two different you know hardware stores. You know, run you know a price at one that's, that's that ends in 99 and one you know the, the other that ends in zero.

Jeff Matevish  45:14  
I mean, even demographics are different between two stores. You might have a store in a lower income area that maybe a lower price is, is more appealing versus in a higher end community that, that may be willing to pay those higher prices.

Drew Thomas  45:28  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  45:29  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  45:29  
And you know, you see stores and you see companies do this. I mean, there are definitely companies out there, you know, I worked for a, a restaurant when I was my first job was at a Ponderosa Steakhouse.

Jeff Matevish  45:43  
Okay, wish those were around again.

Drew Thomas  45:46  
Yeah, I think there's one left somewhere in the Midwest, somewhere that's probably independently run.

Jeff Matevish  45:51  
I think there's one actually in Pennsylvania. I think there's one in Butler. I just watched a video the other. Really? Yeah, there's one in Butler in, in Butler, I think.

Supporting Video Speaker  45:56  
Today we are at Ponderosa in Butler, and Ponderosa actually, at its peak, had 700 restaurants in the United States, and today there are only 15, and this is the last one that remains in Pennsylvania.

Drew Thomas  46:08  
Man, I could go for a Ponderosa wing, man.

Jeff Matevish  46:10  
Well, go to Butler.

Drew Thomas  46:11  
Those were good. I mean, they were, they were, they were good. Anyway, my point being that, and I think hotel, hotel chains are actually even probably even a better example, right? You have, you have Hilton, right? And you have Hilton hotels, which are your four-stars, and then you have say your Double Trees that are three-star hotels, and then you have Hampton Inns that are two-star hotels, right? So, but you're still giving your money to that same company. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  46:40  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  46:41  
So, the thing is, you know, you're, they are attracting the different demographic based on what that demographic finds appealing about getting a hotel room.

Jeff Matevish  46:51  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  46:52  
Right, and they're giving that person the ability to sort of, you know, okay, well maybe I don't need the free breakfast, so I'll do this, or maybe I, or what I have found, what I think is funny too with like Hilton hotels is a lot of times they consider Doubletrees to be the, the, the, the sort of like the three like the mid the mid-grade okay, okay, but Doubletrees don't include free breakfast. You have to pay for breakfast, but they have a restaurant, so that's the thing. And so, so you're trading off. You're saying, oh, well, I'm in a Doubletree. I don't get free breakfast, but I also don't have to eat out of, I don't have to eat my free breakfast from the, from the buffet line of, of waffles and yeah and apples. I can order myself a breakfast in the hotel, right?

Jeff Matevish  47:35  
So, it's more luxurious. Yes, right. Yes, yes. You know.

Drew Thomas  47:36  
Costs more money. So, it's like it's weird. It's like the hotel is cheaper at the Hampton Inn most, most of the time, like per night. Yeah, and you get a free breakfast, which adds to the value.

Jeff Matevish  47:48  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  47:49  
Right. But in reality, like it's, it's what you find important.

Jeff Matevish  47:53  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  47:54  
You know, and what you, what you value out of your experience.

Jeff Matevish  47:56  
Right, right.

Drew Thomas  47:57  
So, the same company, you know, and you can do it again if you're a small business or something like that, you can do it even if you have two or three locations. If, if you have one location that's in an area of town that you know is pretty affluent, maybe you tailor your advertising in that location a certain way compared to the way you do in another part of town.

Jeff Matevish  48:16  
Yeah, you know, true.

Drew Thomas  48:17  
So, there's, there's a lot to this stuff, and we are going, like I said before, I think that we are going to have at least another one, if not two, episodes about shopping and prices and what to look for and how to, how to shop smart. We talk a lot on this show recently about how prices have gone up across the board. You know, just I mean, my gosh, I mean, we went out and we bought we, we literally went out and we, we bought six pounds of, of 93% lean hamburger over the weekend at one of our local stores because...

Jeff Matevish  48:50  
Did you take a loan out?

Drew Thomas  48:51  
Well, no, because they had it on sale for $5.99 a pound.

Jeff Matevish  48:54  
Oh, okay. Oh, wow.

Drew Thomas  48:55  
So, we were like, yes, please. Yeah, and we went out and bought six pounds of this stuff, and then you know, my wife's at home like cutting it into like you know parts and like freezing it into individual sizes for us to yeah to make meals out of or something because you know you, you catch that deal.

Jeff Matevish  49:10  
Yeah, yeah you know that's a, that's a good topic to talk about is, is cooking at home versus eating out or which, which are you actually getting a better deal you know can you buy you know if you're, if you're you know you and your wife want to make a meal, can you buy the same ingredients at one price that you could, you know, go out and have that meal at in a restaurant? You know, sure, yeah.

Drew Thomas  49:27  
Yeah. And how much of that value is in the time that you save and versus not and all that. So, yeah, there's, there's a lot to cover here. So, we definitely invite you to please like, like subscribe so that you don't miss this stuff because we're going to talk about a lot of really great things on pricing and shopping and stuff here in the next couple of, couple of episodes I think.

Jeff Matevish  49:49  
Getting into that season. Yep.

Drew Thomas  49:51  
Yeah. All right. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Matevish  49:53  
Thank you, Drew. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  50:01  
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics. As learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats, is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.

Drew Thomas  51:07  
Psychological pricing is a powerful tool that shapes how we perceive value by turning subtle visual and numerical tweaks into emotional buying triggers. While there's nothing inherently wrong with businesses using these tactics to frame their offers, understanding the science behind left-digit bias, font sizes, color contrast, and other tactics strips away their subconscious influence. Ultimately, being aware of these subtle tricks empowers you to look past the presentation, focus on the actual numbers and become a much smarter and more deliberate shopper. As always, AmeriServ Presents Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated. Music by SchneckMind. Editing, production, and co-hosting duties performed expertly by Jeffrey Matevish. This particular episode is the first in a series that we are producing that focuses on pricing, shopping, and how to make the most of your money. So, be sure to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. You don't want to miss what's coming next. That's fear of missing out, by the way. We'd also love it if you'd shared the show with your friends and family. For now, I'm Drew Thomas, so long.