The eCommerce industry is highly competitive, prompting sellers to be more strategic with their market approach to drive sales and revenue increase. Online sellers utilize various marketing strategies to acquire and retain customers, which is instrumental for the survival and growth of their business.
In particular, many online sellers rely on psychological pricing to influence their customer spending or shopping habits. This article discusses psychological pricing strategies that online sellers and business owners can use to increase their sales performance.
What Is Psychological Pricing?
Psychological pricing is a subset of marketing that relies on the psychological impact of specific prices on consumer psychology and buying behavior. It is a pricing tactic that typically involves collaboration across multiple eCommerce business functions, including sales, marketing, and pricing. Such a collaborative effort aims to capitalize on market trends and create irresistible deals for customers.
Psychological pricing taps into consumers’ subconscious behavior, patterns, and biases to persuade them to make a purchase or spend more money. Most people would, in fact, allude to the classic example of making a $4.00 price into $3.99 as psychological pricing. However, other psychological pricing strategies will be discussed further in the succeeding paragraphs besides the one mentioned.
Simply put, psychological pricing aims to influence customer behavior by introducing various price formatting techniques that can trigger an unconscious reaction in customers and motivate them to make a purchase.
Is Psychological Pricing Effective?
Psychological pricing is a powerful technique for encouraging consumers to purchase. A study published by ResearchGate has shown that adopting psychological pricing as an additional strategy can have a “positive significant impact” on consumer behavior.
Psychological pricing strategies are effective because they use product pricing and pricing psychology to communicate to consumers that they are getting the right value for their purchase. A simple price change can trigger a response from consumers.
Such a pricing strategy creates an emotional response from consumers, motivating them to buy. Consumers feel content with their purchase by creating the perception of a good deal.
It is also worth noting that apart from price, factors such as age, income, education, gender, lifestyle, family size, reference groups, social roles, and status can also impact a customer’s buying behavior.
Overall, psychological pricing strategies can be highly effective in eCommerce businesses, where price and perceived value play a significant role in consumer decision-making.
Pros and Cons of Utilizing Psychological Pricing Strategies
Psychological pricing is an interesting and unique marketing tactic that uses pricing cues, such as round numbers or odd numbers, to affect how consumers perceive and act on prices. If you’re considering using psychological pricing in your eCommerce business, it is crucial to understand both the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy.
What Are the Advantages of Psychological Pricing?
- Increased Sales
The primary motive for implementing psychological pricing is to boost sales volume. Since psychological pricing can make a product seem more affordable, attracting customers to buy products is much easier. Hence, resulting in more sales.
- Improved Perception of Value
If your online customers believe that they are receiving a good deal or that the amount they are paying is worth the value they are receiving, their response is likely instinctive and prompt. Consumers may consider products priced at $4.99 a better deal than those priced at $5.00, despite the difference being only one cent.
- Ease of Implementation
In the case of psychological pricing tactics, changing prices can be done without any significant difficulty and can be achieved through simple modifications. For instance, you can easily experiment with different price endings, such as 99 cents, 95 cents, or 97 cents, and quickly observe its impact on your sales and customers’ purchasing decisions.
What Are the Disadvantages of Psychological Pricing?
- Negative Perception
One of the potential drawbacks of psychological pricing is the perception among some consumers that it is manipulative or deceptive. Customers may feel that businesses are trying to trick them into paying more or that the pricing strategy is being used to hide the product’s actual cost.
It is particularly true if the pricing strategy is not communicated clearly or if customers feel that they are being misled. You should strive to be as transparent as possible in your pricing practices to avoid negative perceptions of your business.
- Misperceived Value
If your pricing strategy is not implemented accordingly, you might lead customers to misperceive the value of your product. If you simply lower the price to entice customers into making a procurement and neglect communicating the value of your product, customers may assume that the quality of the product is inferior.
- Requires Market Demand
Regardless of how well-thought-out your pricing strategy is, it will only be effective if there is demand for your product. Hence, it is necessary to first conduct research or observe the market trends to help you determine whether there is a demand for your product before implementing any pricing psychology.
Overall, psychological pricing can be a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses, but it should be used carefully and strategically to avoid any negative consequences. To increase its’ success, it is best to consider other aspects of the business including marketing, sales, and customer service.
Psychological Pricing Strategies You Can Implement
Charm pricing
Charm pricing is the most common pricing strategy utilized by sellers worldwide. Charm pricing, or odd pricing, refers to a pricing strategy where prices are set to end in an odd number, such as $9.99 instead of $10.00.
The concept behind charm pricing is that customers are more likely to purchase a product when the price appears to be lower than it actually is due to left-digit bias, wherein the consumers’ perceptions and evaluations are disproportionately impacted by the leftmost digit of the product price.
Many sales professionals observed the significant influence of charm pricing on a business’s sales performance. Thus, making charm pricing a must-explore psychological pricing strategy for online sellers and retailers.
Tiered Pricing
A tier pricing strategy involves offering different product versions at different price points. And each pricing level or “tier” provides different product variations. Since its tiers are priced differently, customers can choose the tier that best fits their needs and budget.
For instance, a retailer may sell shirts and give customers the option to buy lightweight shirts for $7, regular t-shirts for $10, or premium heavy-weight t-shirts for $15.
By offering different prices for each tier, your eCommerce business can cater to a broader range of customers and increase revenue by upselling customers to higher tiers.
Decoy Pricing
Decoy pricing or asymmetric dominance refers to a psychological pricing tactic that involves offering three options to customers. This psychological pricing strategy intends to lead customers to view a particular choice as less attractive and the other more valuable, offering an easy justification for an otherwise arbitrary decision.
To illustrate, let us say you are heading to the movies and spot a popcorn stand nearby. The stand offers three different sizes of popcorn: small, medium, and large. The small size is priced at $3, the medium at $4.5, and the large at $5.
However, you observed that the large size appears to be a better bargain than the medium size because it costs only 0.50 cents more for a much greater quantity of popcorn. This is an example of how decoy pricing works – the medium size serves as a decoy to make the large size seem like a superior value.
Decoy pricing is distinct from other pricing tactics, such as left-most digit or odd-even pricing, as it draws attention to higher prices in contrast to a lower-priced item that appears to offer comparatively lower value for money.
Buy One, Get One Free (BOGOF)
BOGOF is another popular psychological pricing method used by retail stores. It operates by offering a big discount that attracts customers. By purchasing two identical items at a 50% discount, customers essentially pay the full price for one item and receive the other item for free.
According to research, consumers are more inclined to make purchases when they receive something extra in return or something free for their original purchase item. This pricing strategy exploits the fact that most customers often struggle to comprehend discount percentages and the fact that customers like discounted prices.
Price Anchoring
Price anchoring is a pricing strategy heavily invested in pricing psychology to capitalize on customers’ emotional reactions that alter their buying behaviors. With this pricing strategy, sellers use high-priced items as a reference point to make other items seem more affordable or a better deal.
For example, a $500 item may make a $200 item seem like a good deal. The higher-priced option, $500, serves as an “anchor” against the lower-priced option of $200 when compared. Thus, making the lower-priced option appear more attractive by comparison.
Psychological Pricing and Repricing Software
Psychological pricing is an effective marketing strategy that can improve sales performance. Your pricing strategy should transparently highlight the value of your product, not just the price tag.
Beyond the psychological pricing methods mentioned above, you should always offer transparency and ensure that your customers do not doubt your business or feel tricked. You should use psychological pricing in conjunction with other marketing efforts and seller tools.
As an alternative to manually adjusting prices, you can avoid the hassle of constantly adjusting prices for your eCommerce business by using repricing software.
Amazon sellers, in particular, can benefit from AI repricers that automatically adjust listing prices according to competitor activity, market conditions, and trends. This simplifies the process of offering competitive prices, requiring only a few clicks.
