Save 31% if you’re a coffee drinker by understanding this pricing tactic

Are you a coffee drinker and do you love having it first thing in the morning? Continue reading this article to understand a pricing tactic and save 31% of your coffee budget

Let’s say you consume around 100g of coffee powder per week

Chances are, you would buy the 200g pack because it is common knowledge that buying larger quantities would give you a better price, right?

For eg. lets take Colgate toothpaste, the 120g charcoal black gel toothpaste costs Rs. 99/-, whereas the 240g costs only Rs. 162/-, i.e. you pay 22% less if you buy the 240g tube rather than two 120g tubes

Lets take another FMCG example, say the wheat flour, the Pillsbury – Chakki Fresh 1kg costs Rs. 57/-, while the 2kg costs Rs. 109/-, i.e. you pay 4.5% less if you buy the 2kg pack against buying two 1kg packs

Doesn’t these two examples make perfect sense?

So, if you’re with me till here, you understand how we are conditioned to believe – and rightly so – that you can save money by buying more aka larger quantities

What if a company uses this conditioning to make more money?

During my weekly grocery drive, I was picking up Bru Instant Coffee. Along the rack were the neatly placed packs of 50g and 200g packets. I involuntarily picked the 200g pack and dropped it into my bag. Out of sheer curiosity I picked the 50g and checked its price

Mamma mia! the 50g was Rs. 60/-, while the 200g was Rs. 315/-!

I looked at the 50g and 200g pack again and did the math. I then shamelessly used my phone to double check the calculation to ensure that I wasn’t losing my sanity

In fact, the 100g pack is priced at Rs. 170/-, so you pay 42% more if you pick a 100g pack rather than two 50g packs!

I checked if Nescafe was playing the same game but no, their prices matched

I doubted if the 50g Bru was a spurious product and checked online and in other stores and I found this dissonance in pricing existed everywhere!

Bru was playing on the conditioning that people would assume 200g would be cheaper than the 50g pack, whilst making 31% more money

I have seen various techniques of pricing psychology, some of which I have mentioned in this article, but none like this

That’s a smart pricing tactic by Bru!

So coffee drinkers, if you want to reduce 31% of your monthly expense on coffee, you know what to do!