Ménage à trois or celebrity death match???

Welcome to 2023!

By now it seems everyone is back to work just to get ready for CNY again :-)

You might have purchased your gym membership by now (I got some mental gym for Restaurant Revenue Management further below) on the back of a 5kg weight gain over Xmas and the believe that this year will be different and that the "90% failure rate of New Years Resolution" does not apply to you :-)

I spent the time over Xmas and New Years releasing The School of Revenue with its first two courses on Revenue Management Fundamentals for Non & Junior RM′s and a Restaurant Revenue Management course and guess what:

During my usual Sunday morning supermarket-prospect-fetish time I realised: Holy sh*t, things are getting hot out there! Super naughty stuff on pricing psychology, marketing and product differentiation!

I promise you, supermarket shopping will never be the same :-)

Supermarket vs Supermarket vs Supermarket

For me it is fascinating of how we are using pricing psychology and marketing hacks. And whilst there is a science for everything (scent, music, colors....) many times it comes down to the brand and the person doing it and their preferences.

Let's see reality:

So what insights does this pic give you? and what emotions do you feel? fancy one more than the other?

Let me highlight a few for you

As you can see Lidl in Deutschland favors a pricing concept of Strikethrough (reference) pricing that allows for activating a cognitive bias called anchoring. They couple that with using red = passion, excitement and yellow = Happy, Joy and a bit of "danger" - couple that with the excitement and whoopsie daisy (sorry, I watched Love Actually with the kids over Xmas :-))

On top of that, the items are randomly assigned without any correlation it seems....or does it? does anyone else also see all meals of the day covered???

EDEKA Südwest on the other hand prefers it the other way - happy days up front with a bit of excitement in the back. And contrary to the randomness all products are from the same section.

Edeka also favours another visual queue to select the Hero picture top right of the page (it's a two fold) using techniques from Menu optimization in Restaurant Revenue Management coupled with top down error...did you realise it has the highest discount too? So double whammy!

Now lets look at another trick in regards to bias around anchoring??? Can you spot the below:

WTF does Cat food have to do with me shaving, brushing or cleaning myself??? Exactly that: Nothing except a $19.99 sets a reference price.

What's next...oh yeah...Ménage à trois!

Supermarket vs Brands

It's really nothing new but it has now gone up to Celebrity deathmatch stage as the fight got dirty, the tricks naughty and the impact is going to be felt perfectly in line with a possible recession.

Timing for this marketing / pricing tactics is perfect!

That's like a slap isn't it? Calling Danone Waters cheap and "available to all".

And they take it even further .... TOP we show you all the items at our prices, bottom if you buy the brands.... with energy prices high, inflation soaring...this is fun marketing stuff out in the open that should amuse us :-)

and with this ladies and gentlemen....take your kids shopping and have an outstanding day being amused by the fun you can have in supermarkets :-)

PS: Last words: If you want to do one thing in 2023 then it is to upgrade your skillset to increase your personal value. For that I created the School of Revenue so that anyone can get skills on their own time without pre requisites to take their careers forward. We might not be a noble University, but we do know what we are talking about - value for money and exclusive. Your choice :-) (see what I did here :-) )

Sign up here: Revenue Management Fundamentals for Non & Junior RM′s and a Restaurant Revenue Management course.

Love

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