2017-07-15 04:04:10

Hi all!
So this is something that has puzzled me for a while. How do developers come up with the prices for whatever it is they are selling using http://developer.paypal.com? I have noticed that they have a tendency to choose amounts that end in .49 or .99, or less commonly .95.
Could someone explain the process of how and why this method has been used?
Many thanks!

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-07-15 04:49:35

For a long time, it's been a standard cultural practice to try and make prices sound less than they actually are. So instead of saying ten pounds, you say nine pounds ninety nine.

I remember once in the nineties one extremely stupid example on a tv advert said "yours for under eighty pounds, yes for only seventy nine ninety nine!"

I don't think anyone is actually ever really fooled by this at all, certainly for me it's become standard practice to round any price upwards, but the cultural tradition is now so ingrained that people can't seem to be able to stop doing it.

One of these silly occasions where the hole world has rather thoughtlessly adopted corporate insanity and the belief that customers are idiots almost unconsciously.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-07-15 17:56:15

That reminds me of the shooting stars pisstake on B and Q. This hammer is worth less than 50p, that's why it's 49p.

2017-07-15 20:21:16

Hi.
Well, the price for a product is generated by the market the product is aimed for. A company needs to conduct an thurrogh market analysis by taking prices of other companys into account, own finances, production costs, rent for the warehouses to store the products and so on.
from that, a company can calculate the best price and launch the product onto the market, with the first of the 5 product life cycles introduced.
The prices with for example 9.99 are done to make the customer feel he is paying lless than 10 dollars, even though it's just 1 Cent, one of those little marketing tricks used. In the  netherlands I found out they mostly set the prices to let's say 9.95 for example, I noticed that in some stores and I quite like the idea of that.
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2017-07-16 04:50:36 (edited by magurp244 2017-07-16 10:28:42)

That is just one of many trick, alot of it involves psychology, metric, and statistical data. PC tends to not be as bad as mobile, although there are still a few methods at play. On steam for example people typically wait for sales to buy anything, because why pay full price when a sale is around the corner? So some developers up-price their games knowing that the true value they want will come during the "sale", essentially manipulating expectations of value to get the desired price point.

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2017-07-16 05:20:44

@Magurp, yep your correct, I'd also recommend Tapped In: How EA Combined The Simpsons with Video Gambling to Make $130 Million as a great  read on these sorts of practices.

it's not just the game industry either. The other day Mrs. Dark and I ordered  from Pappa Johns, and basically found that if we spent over £40, we got a %50 discount meaning we paid about what we would've wanted to pay were the prices of Pappa Johns not stupidly expensive.

So, Pappa Johns effectively charge too much and then have so called "sales" to make the customer believe that she/he is saving when in effect your just paying market price.

Can you say brain washing by operant conditioning?

Again all of this comes when the consumer has absolutely no power over the prices charged for products and companies reduce people down to the level of roar prophet generators in their production model, a trend which gets worse as monopolies increase, and individual consumer rights decrease ---- can anyone say Huxley?

Bloody hell we're a crappy species!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-07-16 13:35:38 (edited by flackers 2017-07-16 13:48:13)

There's also prestige pricing as well isn't there. Where they deliberately make a luxury/pro model that's over-priced, then make what appears to be the same thing with fewer bells and whistles, so the standard model seems reasonably priced by comparison, when it's actually pretty expensive. So those who can afford it feel like they're getting something extra special, and those who can't feel like they're getting value for money. It works on me smile.

2017-07-16 17:42:11

Hi.
There are also those companys which take a product, completely redo the design and sell it for a few thousand dollars. An example would be Vertu, they took smart phones and put expensive diamonds, gold plating and what not onto the casing, but well, here is the fun part, they just got bancrupt.
Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2017-07-16 21:40:48

One that gets me is where you have had a trusted product or company which has existed for a long time and which people remember, but which goes bankrupt due  all the scummy modern business practices,  then the name is bought up by some completely different company who proceed to sell products with that old license which have bugger all to do with the quality or standard the company used  to have, indeed  they're often an entirely different manufacturer supplier and over all  which some cheapo outfit is trying to flog as the original.

It  happened a few years  in the Uk with a famous chocolate maker called Thorntons. Thorntons used to be a very good quality brand, indeed we used to have them every Christmas and a friend of mine used to buy their cakes. #
However the company went bust in the recession and was purchiced by a completely different manufacturer, now their chocolate is cheap, nasty and has bugger all to do with the original accept the name.

heck, this is happening a lot with confections and grosseries at the moment, especially as  businesses are going the way of the dinosaur and everything is getting to the stage where it's owned by a very few companies who can skimp on the quality of everything since they're the only outfit in town and  customers have no choice but to deal with them.

Actually it's getting frighteningly like the history detailed in 1984, though with corporate self interest and the elusion of a "free market" (one of the greatest   oxymorons in the English language) rather than a totalitarian state.

still I'm thinking that "freedom is slavery" and "war is peace are becoming rather frightening truths of the way the world currently works, especially  the intrinsic double think of most advertising.

As I said, we're a pretty crappy species over all.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-07-17 05:05:01

Oh wow, I didn't realize I had gotten so many responses. I guess me forgets to subscribe to this topic. tongue
Anyhow, my question was specifically on single-person businesses, like AudioGame or software developers. For example: How did Munawar decide that Treasure Hunt was going to be $25, not $24.99, or TDV for some price that I can't remember.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-07-17 13:00:45

Well talking purely in terms of audiogames, it seems developers either A, base their prices on what graphical and other types of indi games are sold for, B, look at audiogames and base their prices on what audiogames are sold for and what the community think, or C, make up an arbitrary and  higher than normal price since it is assumed that as an "accessible" game they can charge what they bloody well like, *ccough azabat *cough  big_smile.

As for  the lack of hole numbers rule though, as I said it's almost these days become expected that instead of charging three pounds someone will charge two pounds ninety nine, it's so  prevalent now that people do it without thinking, retailers from single person games developer outfits to the worlds few mega corporate masters, even though every customer with an ounce of brains also knows to always round up.

Myself I actually respect developers or indeed any retailer who just says "twenty five dollars" rather than prevaricating.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-07-17 13:23:25

Ah, I see.
Yeah, the problem is that if you charge something at $x.99, most people who pay by card will pay that exact amount, while people paying by cash would round up to the nearest 5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 and get some change back.

Ulysses, KJ7ERC
She/they
Reedsy

2017-07-17 14:25:14

for me it makes no difference how much they charge,   my priority is the quality of the game.

I will just give you an IOS example.

I rarely buy a game unless there is a trial version I can try or I have researched it thoroughly.

King of dragon pass for example was £10 with no trial to see if it was a game I would be interested in,  so I proceeded to investigate the reviews and was eventually swayed to take the plunge.

now I must confess, if there was a trial version of kodp I most certainly would never have bought it,  however because I handed over the equivalent of a nice bottle of wine I made myself play it and over time grow to love it.

the plus side to trial games are expertly described in the whole of the blindfold series,  the 10 coin gift you get at the start is superb, as by coin 2 I have realised its not for me then delete the ap, but for completely the opposite reason I never liked kodp.

kodp was the fact I could not understand it that well, the blindfold series was how simplistic everything is and there was as much depth to the games as a shallow puddle.