Archive for January, 2006

One form of price discrimination practised by supermarkets is to offer one item for the price of two. Only they don’t advertise it that way – they prefer to advertise two items for the price of one. What’s going on here?

The supermarkets want to sell their goods for as much as possible, so they like to price high. But they don’t want to lose customers who can’t afford the higher prices and would shop elsewhere. So they try to find a way to extract maximum profit from the well-heeled shopper-in-a-hurry whilst still getting some profit from the thrifty comparison-shopper.

So when melons are priced at £2 each, but with a “buy one get one free” offer, you can buy one melon for £2, or you can buy two melons for £2. Who would buy only one melon then? People buying from a shopping list, who only need one melon, might buy only one (if they don’t notice the promotion). People for whom time is money, who just pick what they want from the shelves without carefully checking the pricing details, might buy only one.

On occasions, the “buy one get one free” deal might be a loss leader, but more often the supermarket is making money from everyone. Those melons might only cost the supermarket 80 pence, so they make money whether you buy one or two for your £2.

I ran into this situation this morning, which is what prompted this blog entry. I wanted one melon for a recipe, and darned if I’m going to buy one for the price of two. So instead of buying one melon for £2, and instead of buying two melons for £2 including one that I don’t want, I headed up the road to the local fruit shop and bought one melon for £1.35.

Just thought you’d like to know!

If you fly by air, try asking those around you how much they paid for their seats. It’s quite possible that you won’t find anyone who paid the same fare as you. The airlines aim to extract as much profit from each customer as possible, and charging different fares to different people is one way they achieve this.

This is called price discrimination, and it’s not restricted to airlines. You might think that supermarkets are one place where everyone pays the same price, but that’s far from true.

By being aware of this price discrimination, and understanding how it works, you can make better purchase decisions.

From time to time, I’ll discuss examples of price discrimination, which I’ll link to this page:

• One for the price of two

I took the kids to see Chronicles of Narnia – the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at Apollo Cinemas Morecambe.

Well, they sure enjoyed it! They loved the action, and each had their favourite character.

But I didn’t find enough depth to hold my interest. I found myself wondering about how the special effects had been achieved. Some of them are most impressive – the portrayal of emotions on the face of Aslan the Lion is truly amazing.

A lot of work must have been put into the mythical creatures, but to not much avail. A graphically-generated half-horse half-human isn’t much use if the plot doesn’t develop a genuine role (or at least purpose) for it.

The battle scenes, too, were impressively filmed but rather tedious to watch after a while.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford wrote that “Adults just don’t get ‘Narnia’ chronicles”, and I think he’s right.

Have your popup-blocker enabled when visiting the above link, by the way.

Trivia: there were more names listed on the credits than I can remember for any other movie I’ve seen. And shooting locations in so many countries (with even separate crews for New Zealand North and South Islands).

Signs of Life is one of those quintessentially eccentric English books. It’s a collection of amusing signs – but the signs were created, not discovered.

The authors (Dave Askwith and Alex Normanton) created fake signs and attached them to plausible locations before photographing them.

Part of the appeal of this book is the skill with which the signs have been made. If you live in England, you’ll probably recognise the originals that inspired them.

There’s a certain deadpan humour in the way that outrageous messages are presented in straight corporate typefaces. I can just imagine the double-take as train passengers read a fake sign before realising that it can’t be genuine.

Yet sometimes the authors “over-egg the custard”. There’s a photo of a half walnut glued above a sign that announces “Magic Walnut. Penalty for improper use – gypsy curse.” Perhaps it would have been more plausible if it said “Magic Walnut. Penalty for improper use £50.” or even “Emergency Walnut” instead of “Magic Walnut”.

I intended to give it as a christmas present, but after looking through it I decided not to. Of the featured signs, more than necessary were vulgar and crude. No doubt there are customers for whom that’s a feature, but for me it was a bug.

It’s an amusing little book, though not one that’s going to hold much interest after the first couple of browse-throughs. I have a hunch that it won’t be republished once the current stock sells. I got mine over-the-counter from Waterstones in December 2005 for £4.99.

No, the “Dutiful Consumer” doesn’t mean that it’s my duty to consume (though it sometimes feels that way)!

Instead, it means that I’m dutifully reporting my experiences as a consumer here, in case it helps others to make their consumption decisions.