So is anybody else getting sick of marketing teams making us jump through hoops with multiple price points?

tonka on 01/12/2015 - 01:56

I am starting to get over having to collect and carry multitudes of coupons and cards just to receive genuine pricing.

At the moment to do my shopping I need to activate an email, present a card and two coupons and spend a certain amount. On top of that it needs to be the right week to buy my soft drink or t.p etc.

I understand part of this is being a savvy shopper, but I also know it's mostly about making me 'think' I am getting a bargain and feel special by presenting me a lower perceived price point. I am though getting sick of the hassle and it really makes shopping a chore.

It would be nice to just stop and get takeaway without having to plan ahead to bring the right coupons. KFC is a classic for this , I never get KFC as I don't get their coupons, so their marketing actually keeps me away.

Every single place you shop you need to be a member to get special pricing, so approaching a checkout starts becoming like an exam, do I have the right membership, did I spend the right amount or am I short 5 cents to get my discount etc.

Another example Masters 10% off constantly, so 10% less is their genuine price as far as I'm concerned, so if i need to go to Masters I need to acquire a catalogue / docket or code first, this is just making shopping there a poor experience. Result is either I go there but am annoyed or I go to Bunnings rather than pay the extra 10%.

General Discussion

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 01/12/2015 - 02:22
    +3

    How to sum up? Absolutely.
    Particularly Woolworths Online for me over the last six months. Deadly lot of hard work.

    Genuine bargains and bargain hunting is great fun, but any company rising prices for a sale, are scammers/crooks, and I no longer buy from them if I can get cheaper overseas.

    Glad you bought this up OP.

    • inasero on 01/12/2015 - 09:16
      +1

      Dick Smith…
      absolute Dicks to deal with

      • cwongtech on 01/12/2015 - 09:22

        However once in a while there's actually bargains! (UX303LB/UX303UB laptops for me, they're actually cheaper than any computer shop in Australia and considering the horrible AUD exch rate, it actually works out better to buy from DSE surprisingly)
        … when they have stock at least.

        • inasero on 01/12/2015 - 09:24

          that's the key - if they have stock (which they rarely do)

  • ozhunter on 01/12/2015 - 04:40
    +2

    Every single place you shop you need to be a member to get special pricing

    Woolworths for example. You get points with Woolworths Rewards, some items are only on sale if you have the card and the 4c off a litre at the petrol station. As annoying as it is, they do try to sway you to shop at their store.

    Another example Masters 10% off constantly, so 10% less is their genuine price as far as I'm concerned

    Like Dicksmith, when they have sales, customers are more likely to impulse buy for fear of missing out on the discount. If the price was the same all the time, there would be no rush to buy anything.

    • cwongtech on 01/12/2015 - 09:26
      +1

      Woolworths for example. You get points with Woolworths Rewards, some items are only on sale if you have the card and the 4c off a litre at the petrol station. As annoying as it is, they do try to sway you to shop at their store.

      They don't even hide the Woolworths Dollars Scheme.. Not even subtly. I for one don't use my woolworths rewards cards at all (I had 6), Everyday Rewards was SO much better (Spend $30, save $10 instantly, random offers for not shopping at woolworths for a long time.. that's why I had 6 cards cause offers differ based on your spending pattern)

      Like Dicksmith, when they have sales, customers are more likely to impulse buy for fear of missing out on the discount. If the price was the same all the time, there would be no rush to buy anything.

      However they're too regular now @DSE the well-informed OzBargainer will wait for the right time in DSE's coupon cycle.
      Usually I find the already discounted + onceamonthfurther15%off to give the lowest price possible on high value items.

  • mskeggs on 01/12/2015 - 08:15
    +3

    This is called segment pricing. It is doing exactly what it is intended.
    It extracts the most profit margin it can from each sale. Average people will shop at normal prices. OzB professionals will stack coupons, create email accounts etc. to shave additional percentages.
    I, like most people, am somewhere along that spectrum. So I will typically order from Dan Murphy's for click and collect so I can get cash rewards, but I don't bother chasing new account grocery discounts that mean I have to spend more in a single shop than I want to, for example.

    The circumstance where you know a discount is possible, but unavailable at that time to you (like you mentioned with KFC) is a small subset, and the marketers believe few would choose not to buy what they wanted right now (the fried chicken) because they knew they could get a discount at another time. I personally think this is wrong, and there is marketing theories that says segment pricing causes customers to devalue the product by the amount of the prospective discount - causing them not to buy when it is removed. Hence Dick Smith's current financial troubles, I would say.

    Most businesses seem to go through phases in their discount strategies. E.g, Kmart used to run big discount sales on different items each week, but now have moved to lower pricing everyday, even though individual price points might be slightly higher than the old discounted prices.
    And remember, if you are getting tired of the rigamarole of discounts, you can buy a service that takes care of all of it for you. It is called RRP.

    • retiredfeline on 01/12/2015 - 08:34
      +1

      Exactly. This is explained by microeconomics. For example if there weren't business people willing to pay a premium for flexible flights, saver flights would not be as cheap.

      • [Deactivated] on 03/12/2015 - 10:06

        Both excellant posts.

        My biggest 'grievance' is with airfares. People just don't get it and you summed it up perfectly. I don't know any airline listed as a charity.

    • Diji1 on 03/12/2015 - 13:36

      Otherwise known as screwing the customer by offering a high price, waiting until they show they aren't interested and then offering a lower price making the customer feel like your ripping them off by making the first offer :D

  • Ughhh on 01/12/2015 - 14:54

    This is sort of like complaining that you have to work to get paid…

    • tonka on 01/12/2015 - 17:39
      +1

      Don't think so, I have to put about 3 times as much research into my shopping as I do my job.

  • Diji1 on 03/12/2015 - 13:33
    +1

    Oh like you mean with Telstra where you visit their site the first time and it's $89.95 for 200GB.

    Then you visit again without converting and it's now $89.95 for 500GB.

    And then then you come back to the website again, without conversion occurring, and it's $89.95 for 800GB through some marketing idiocy they call the "Big Broadband Benefit" which "everyone is eligible for".

    That's just the website, you should hear the constantly changing deals when you ring them up lel.

  • Diji1 on 04/12/2015 - 09:42
    +1

    Wait: there's another price now that I'm off my old ip and on a new one - 500GB for $95.

    Thanks for having a wildly varying set of prices Telstra, people may as well just call up and ask for the price of $89.95, $59 setup then very next question ask are they going to give you the price when they don't and when they say no hangup and make TIO complaint. That's what I did except I was an idiot and wasted 3 hours that I'll never get back.

    The nice thing about making a TIO complaint is apparently providers get charged $40 for each one by da gummints so you can punish them in the only way they care about: by removing money from their possession.

    • tonka on 04/12/2015 - 14:37

      Damn I've done that too. The Telstra sales people don't understand their pricing any better than we do.
      Electricity is worse, I ended up spending about 3 days on the web and the phone trying to figure it out.

  • jazoom on 10/12/2015 - 11:16
    +1

    This is actually something I'm hoping I can change with the introduction of Price Hipster, since it ignores that kind of thing and deliberately reports the actual, advertised prices.

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