We tend to think of numbers as objective.
9 is nine, 5 is five.
But that’s not how customers see prices.
In fact, there are a few simple things we can do to make our prices seem more appealing.
First, de-emphasise or remove the dollar sign.
- Dollar signs remind us we’re spending money, which is unpleasant and makes us want to spend less.
- For example, customers in a cafe spent less money when their menu included dollar signs compared with customers using the menu without the currency symbol.
Second, remove unnecessary commas and decimals.
Let’s say the price is two thousand dollars
We can write $2,000.00 or $2000.
Thanks to Magnitude Representation, the more characters in our price, the longer it takes our brains to process and the bigger we think the number is!
If we want to downplay our price, we should therefore remove as many unnecessary characters as possible.
And finally, use a frame of reference to make our price seem reasonable.
What do I mean? What if I told you that price wasn’t $2000 at all, it was only $1700?
By anchoring you to the higher number ($2000), I’ve made $1700 seem small in comparison.
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