Such a deal

I went shopping yesterday. Besides fact that I am rather proud my bill came to $37.00, I had quite the experience with pricing. The store had a sale on hamburger in 3 pound packs. It got my attention because an older lady was frozen just staring at the display.  That is when I took a closer look at the signs.   Next to the big display of 3 pounds for $18.99 was the less noticeable display of 1 pound packs for $5.99.   Yes, the 3 pound packs were going quickly.  Yes, same brand….same 80/20 mix.

Why pay more for a 3 lb pack?  Marketing strategy to sell more at a higher price?

Anne Miller wrote:Why pay more for a 3 lb pack?  Marketing strategy to sell more at a higher price?

Yes. Very few people will actually do the math.

Pearl Sutton wrote: Yes. Very few people will actually do the math.

I am finding fewer and fewer people have been taught the tricks to do mental math.

It isn't 3x $5.99 that's important - it's that $5.99 easily rounds to $6 and 3x6 should be in most people's heads, but it isn't.  Calculators don't replace mental math for seeing relationships between numbers.

I can remember reading a children's book based on the WWII French resistance. The mental math those young teens were expected to be able to do under fire was incredible. I admit it would have been paper and pencil math for me, but that's partly because I can't see that imaginary chalk board in my head that other people have the ability to visualize.

Because we have some children that learn "differently", it seems we've dumbed down the whole system to accommodate them. The real solution is to be more aware of those differences and help children develop more tools in their tool boxes to figure out how to get to the same end point via a different route.

Yes, our industrial food system is more than willing to make the process harder for the consumer in an effort to improve their profit margin.

Back in my misspent youth, I did the mandatory job of stocking shelves in a grocery store.   The store set up huge display of green beans at 5 cans for a dollar. It was immediately visible as you walked in the door.   Over the course of the weekend I am sure I put up over 100 cases into that display.it was a 24 hour store….so others were stocking it as well.  Of course, in the vegetable section, the individual cans were clearly marked at 17 cents.  

Hi Jay,

It is terrifying.  Back in the 70s an experiment was done with pocket calculators.  People were given a pocket calculator and a bunch of math questions. The calculators were programmed to provide the wrong answers.  Of course, you already know the results.  Most of the answers were wrong …The only noteworthy subject was a young person who commented that something was wrong with his calculator, so he worked out the answers on paper.

Jay: The part that bugs me, besides people can't do mental math anymore, is that they have a calculator on the smartphone in their pockets... and STILL won't run the numbers.  
I'll admit when I'm tired and doing weird math in the store, I'll use my phone calculator.

Another weird math I'll do is when I'm buying things online and paying shipping, I'll check to see how they are shipping, and get prices for various amounts of the item. There is a place I buy from often that ships in flat rate boxes, shipping rates stay the same (making the price per item of price + shipping change) until they go up to a second box. They can put 12 of the items I buy in one box, at 13 the number goes way up due to another box needed. I order 12 at a time, that is the cheapest way (price + shipping) to buy them.   People don't do THAT math either.  

John: I always price check the end cap products against the shelf prices. Something else to watch when doing that is brands, some things I have brands I prefer, some things I don't care about brand (canned beets are impossible to tell if they are brand name or not) so I will take whichever item best fits my parameters. A super cheap brand that tastes so bad I don't eat them is not worth any price to me. A brand name that tastes like the generics isn't worth the price hike.  

Problem solving starts with "Define the ACTUAL parameters of the problem" and that is part of it all people seem to miss. The quick answer is often not the one you ACTUALLY wanted.

When my son (now in his 40s) was young, we would go to the grocery store, and he would, predictably, want some sort of treat strategically placed in the checkout aisle.  Our state at the time had a 6% sales tax.  I finally got tired of telling him 'no' on the treats and told him that if he could calculate the sales tax, in his head, before the checkout clerk hit the total button (he could see the running total on the screen), that I would buy him the treat of his choice, within reason.  

By some miracle, the boy suddenly learned to run a percentage in his head. Fast. He wasn't always exact, but we gave points for 'close enough'.  The skill has served him well; he has gone on to learn many mental math tricks.  

I used to add prices (in my mind) at the checkout counter so I knew what my total bill would be and that the checker had not made a m mistake.

Since covid, I just pay and not worry about mistakes.

Anne Miller wrote:I used to add prices (in my mind) at the checkout counter so I knew what my total bill would be and that the checker had not made a mistake.

Me too!
and usually can get within a dollar or two just by rounding up costs of things....amazes Steve because he rarely remembers what things cost.
I win at rummy too😊

It seems like more recently the display sign for things had a price per ounce so you could easily compare prices....I think that's gone now?

Judith Browning wrote:It seems like more recently the display sign for things had a price per ounce so you could easily compare prices....I think that's gone now?

One thing I love about Portugal is that if you go to a supermarket's website, you can choose to display the search results in order of Preço/capacidade, ie price per amount. OK sometimes it messes up and doesn't realise that one fruit isn't the same as one kilogram of fruit, but for things like rice or pasta it's very easy to pick out the best value.

They've improved a bit now, but they also used to be absolutely terrible at advertising one price and then charging a different one. A few sessions of me holding up a very busy line and refusing to pay until they'd sorted it out, or once making them wait while I marched back to fetch the label off the shelf, and they seem to have got their act in order. When I first moved here there were many old folk who couldn't read, and it went totally against the mentality of the locals to query a price even if they'd noticed. Improvements in education and a change in attitudes, and computerisation improvements, have all helped.

I do remember very early on, when my Portuguese was exceptionally bad, finding a totally illiterate old lady trying to choose salt for preserving her winter food supply. She asked for my help, then things got awkward as she realised I didn't speak the language very well. But I understood perfectly what she wanted and I explained how much the salt she had in her hand cost per kilo, then reached for one that was half the price and told her that this one was the best price and how many did she want?  She was very relieved, and then in very bad Portuguese I said that I don't understand the language, but I DO understand the cheapest. We certainly both spoke the language of frugality and parted the best of friends.