Using Cognitive Bias to Shift Price Perception for Smart Sunglasses

If you're a follower of my personal feed, you'll know that I recently opted to try my hand at retail sales in the Sunglass Hut at my local Macy's. I love it there because I enjoy helping customers, practicing Spanish language skills in the real world, and learning new things about retail and sales.

In this article, I'll talk about a product I sell at "The Hut," the Meta AI Ray-Bans, and then how I use a cognitive bias to frame the price for consumers as part of the sales process.

Sunglass Hut is a great working environment and very lucky to sell such high-quality products. Sunglasses are both fashionable and functional and Sunglass Hut's parent company, EssilorLuxottica makes and distributes the very best.

The first thing one must learn is product knowledge: Where everything is in the store, what makes different brands unique, what price ranges can guide customers to where they're most comfortable, and the features of the products themselves.

Typical sunglasses are about the aesthetics of fashion lines (Prada, Versace, and more) and lens features like photochromatics (Transition?), color enhancement (such as Ray-Ban's Chromance or Oakley's Prizm), and glare-reducing polarization.

Meta-AI Ray-Ban Smart Sunglasses

The most unique product in the store is the Meta AI Ray-Bans. The Meta AI sunglasses have all the typical sunglasses features as well as:

• 12-megapixel camera capable of photo, video, or live streaming
• Open-air speakers that pipe surprisingly high-quality sound from the arms to the ears without being heard by others standing nearby
• Five microphones positioned around the frames to receive wearer voice commands, record sound, or make phone calls

These glasses also come fully equipped with Meta's AI functionality allowing users to not just give specific commands, like "Hey Meta, take a picture," but to ask open-ended questions like, "Hey Meta, what's a good Christmas gift for a five-year-old boy?" They also support real-time information retrieval, "Hey Meta, what is the current score of today's Yankees game?" or "Hey Meta, how far am I from a Starbucks?" They even are working on real-time translation right in your ear (future release).

Beyond that, these glasses can also "see" allowing them to perform image recognition and answer questions about things the cameras are facing. They can do text translation, call phone numbers, follow links, or even tell you what vegetable you're looking at and give cooking suggestions.

These bad boys are immensely powerful. All packaged in a lightweight frame barely distinguishable from their "non-smart" counterparts:

I love to talk up the features of these, gushing on about them to folks who've just stopped by to try the demo we have at the front of the store. They're extremely cool and I don't need to "sell" that hard for folks to be impressed by what they can do and the value they can add.

When folks hear about all these features they assume the glasses are quite pricy. Typical estimates from customers checking out the demo when they ask how much they cost are usually at least $500. I'm excited to tell them the actual price... but first...

Ray-Ban Wayfarers

The features of a typical pair of Meta AI sunglasses are packed into Ray-Ban's iconic Wayfarer frames.

The Ray-Ban Wayfarer is one of the most recognizable and often-imitated designs for sunglasses. First manufactured in the 1950s, they surged in popularity with their prominent featuring in 1980s films like The Blues Brothers and Risky Business.

The stylish Wayfarer frames are made from acetate, a material that is lightweight, durable, flexible, and hypoallergenic. Ray-Ban lenses allow for maximum UV protection while remaining lightweight, durable, and maintaining visual quality.

In short, these are a darn good pair of sunglasses. The typical retail price for a pair of authentic Wayfarers is $200.

Anchoring the Price

When presenting the price to a customer, I always begin with the price of the Wayfarers alone. Aside from all the functionality of the Meta AIs, a wearer is still walking around with stylish, quality sunglasses. This is an important piece of context that will influence the next piece of data:

The Ray-Ban Meta AI sunglasses are only $299. A mere $99 more than regular Wayfarers.

The reaction on customers' faces when I reveal the price speaks for itself. This is due to the great deal but also because of how I anchored the information being presented.

Anchoring is a cognitive bias whereby a person's perception of something is affected by a piece of information they have received first. You can use this to subtly alter someone's perception of quality, price, or value when describing your product or offering.

This is why I always tell the customer the price of a pair of Wayfarers first. By anchoring the customer's expectations around the base price of the glasses alone, they don't hear "This is a fancy bit of technology that costs almost $300." Instead, they now hear, "All those extras are only $99 extra on top of a pair of good sunglasses."

Many visitors are just curiously checking out the demo, which sits outside the store on a high-traffic pathway. They didn't plan to purchase in the first place. But if there are no other customers, I enjoy taking the time to polish my pitch of the features and love the reactions when I share the price. Many folks walk away thinking about asking for or gifting a pair for an upcoming birthday or chatting about who they know who might like them.

The technique is most effective on someone already looking to buy Wayfarers or a similar pair of Ray-Bans. These shoppers are prepared to spend the $200 and are now open to the upsell.

Other Uses of Anchoring

Anchoring is used often in pricing. A common example is sale pricing which anchors the original cost to make the sale price seem like a good deal. Some retailers take extra advantage of this by always showing a higher price that is being replaced by the "sale price."

Anchoring is used in negotiations where a buyer may offer a much lower price while a seller offers a much higher price. Both are willing to accept a middle price and their perception of the transaction is affected by the negotiation process anchored on the original offers they made. Buyers who walk away from transactions satisfied by the deal they got are more likely to return for future purchases. The same effect applies to salary negotiations.

Decoy Pricing

Decoy pricing is a common variation of anchoring. Often a business will present a third pricing option which is not a particularly good deal to make the business's preferred sale seem more attractive. For example:

• Movie popcorn prices: Small is $3, Medium is $6, and Large is $7. Why buy a Medium when the much larger Large is only a dollar more? The Medium is serving as a decoy.
• Hard currency packages of gems (??) where the lowest price for 1?? for $0.99, the middle is 10?? for $5.99, and the largest package is 35 ?? for $29.99. The largest price, which isn't as good a $/?? value is the decoy.
• Wine offerings are a place where the low-end option (say $20) is frequently the decoy as most consumers will think the cheapest option isn't good enough but it still makes the better-profit-margined mid-tier price ($35-45) seem reasonable. Social perceptions also factor in here as few want to be perceived as "cheap."

Conclusion

Setting and presenting prices involves more than just calculating costs—it’s about shaping consumer perception. By applying behavioral psychology principles like anchoring, as illustrated with the Meta AI Ray-Ban, sellers can frame prices in a way that maximizes the perception of value and is therefore more likely to convert to a sale or upsell.

Heather Arbiter is a Product Manager and Game/Gamification Designer with a passion for leveraging behavioral science to improve products. When she's not writing, working with clients, or searching for her next full-time gig, she happily works part-time at the local Macy's Sunglass Hut where she smashes through sales goals using her customer-first attitude, product enthusiasm, and knowledge of behavior.

The Meta AI glasses are available in two more styles besides Wayfarer (Headliner and Skyler), though all are thicker acetate frames capable of housing the impressive technology inside. The lenses can be polarized and Transition? technology can be added making them practical both inside and outside. And of course, they can be made prescription (as can many of the sunglasses available at the Hut). Stop in and order a pair from your local Sunglass Hut. If you're a Macy's customer you can even use Macy's Pay to buy them from the author—just send Heather a direct message!

#FeatureFriday is a bi-weekly newsletter about the intersection of product, gamification, and behavior. This is the 33rd edition of the series.