May 08, 2012

$10.99 vs. $9.99

Below is another finding from my first-ever DRTV Experiences survey. This question may be tainted, though, but more on that later ...

Question: "You're about to buy a TV product when you notice the price is $10.99 instead of $9.99. What do you do?"


(Click to enlarge)

The blue bar, representing 85 people (or 68.5%), is for the answer: "I buy it anyway."

The most common reason given echoes what we learned about $9.95 vs. $9.99 vs. $10: People don't sweat the small stuff if they want something. Some typical comments:

  • "If it was something I needed, the $1 difference in price would not prevent me from purchasing"
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  • "If it is something I really like, a dollar will not make or break the deal."
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  • "$1 isn't much to worry about."

For the purists out there, the margin of error on this one was about 8%, so the actual percentage that don't care could be as low as 60.5%. Or did I bias the question? Some people understood my phrasing to mean the marketer was trying to play a trick on them. A handful of responses went like this: "If I was expecting to pay $9.99 due to advertising, I wouldn't accept the higher price. Either change it to the price listed or lose the sale."

That makes me think if the question were more straightforward, the 'buy it anyway' percentage would be even higher. But I guess we won't know for sure until my next survey.