What Your Product Pricing Says About Your Brand

When you’re creating a new ecommerce store or launching a product line, pricing is all important. Make your products too cheap and you’re forsaking precious profits, but them it too high and people will shop somewhere else. The pricing that you choose also says a lot about how you position your brand online. Let’s take a look at how using different price points will reflect your brand psychologically: Number 9, number 9, number 9

The use of the number 9 in pricing is one of retail’s oldest tricks.

In 2009, a study by the Universities of Colorado and Washington established exactly why. The researchers found that shoppers paid a disproportionate amount of attention to the leftmost digits in price points. 44% of participants selected a $3.99 pen over a $2.00 pen, while just 18% chose a $4.00 pen over one at $1.99. And another experiment by MIT and the University of Chicago showed that when a dress was sold at $34, $39 and $44 on different days, the $39 dress sold best – even though it was $5 more expensive than the cheapest option. Put simply, dropping a penny to make a left digit smaller makes products appear better value to consumers than they are.

In ecommerce, the use of number 9 can also have a more practical effect. Budget-savvy shoppers are very comfortable with segmenting products into different price point categories. Dropping a penny or cent could make a premium product attainable to a price-conscious consumer.

The quality of 0 While numbers ending in 9 are used by retailers to highlight a killer deal, many high-end brands opt to implement a round number ending in 0 or.00 to emphasise something other than cost. After all, the target markets of high end handbag brands like Prada aren’t the sort of customers to be swayed by a hot deal. These people want quality – a premium product that stands the test of time.

The message in using 0s is clear: don’t judge us on price, judge us on our quality. It’s not just super high-end brands that are forsaking 9s either. Take a look at the likes of high street standards like Topshop and Debenhams who are choosing to convey quality in their brand by pricing their clothes with round, confident numbers.

Standing out with a 4 or 7 Tweaking your product prices down to seemingly irregular pricing can make a product seem excellent value – as if you’ve scrutinised all your costs and boiled the price down to the most affordable fee. This is particularly good in competitive markets. For instance, If you’re selling popular items on large third-party platforms like eBay or Amazon, an irregular price point can make you stand out from the crowd. After all, although we’ve found that .99 pricing is undoubtedly successful, it has become something of a cliché. Launching an ecommerce store? Talk to TheGenieLab. We specialise in making online stores stand out through inventive design and easy usability. Got any design queries? Give our team a call on (UK) +44 (0) 2920 837 438 or (US) +1 305-762-0130 chat with us below.