Is premium pricing for larger quantity a pricing tactic?

A few weeks back, I had written this blog on how you can save 31% if you bought four individual 50 grams of Bru coffee powder compared to buying a single pack of 200 grams. This goes against common knowledge, where we are conditioned that buying larger quantities gives us a better bargain than buying smaller quantities

Usually companies applies the second degree price discrimination through discounts when consumers buy larger quantities. However Bru seem to be doing the opposite of this

Today I saw a social media post which got me thinking

In the post, a seller had two banners in front of his shop. One read, Rs. 10/- for a watermelon; the other read buy a pack of 3 for Rs. 50

A buyer buys 3 watermelons and says

“You probably shouldn’t be in Business, I just bought 3 individual watermelons for Rs. 30”

“I am surprised everyone is telling me this, and buying 3 watermelons”, replied the seller

The seller was using the pack of three watermelons for Rs. 50/- as a decoy to make people buy three individual watermelons and think that they got a better deal, whereas if the decoy wasn’t there, they may have bought only one watermelon!

Considering this, is Bru playing the same game? Lets look at two scenarios

Scenario 1: Bru is playing the above game, so that people end up buying more than one 50 grams packet because they think they are getting a bargain compared to the higher priced 200 grams pack

Now you can say that, coffee being a FMCG would anyways be consumed, so what is the point in making a customer buy more than what he needs

The reason is elementary. The more of a consumable you have, the more generous you would be in its consumption, thereby needing to buy more. So it makes perfect sense to push to the consumer more than what he/she needs

Scenario 2: Bru isn’t playing the above game but is trying to play on the common belief that, the larger the pack, the cheaper it would be. So if someone picks the 200 grams pack, they straight away make 31% profit over the 50 grams pack

As you can see, whatever the tactic Bru must be using, they would benefit, as long as the 50 grams pack is above the cost of production & distribution