How Pricing Works
A loss leader is an advertising budget spent through the till
Selling something below cost is not a mistake or a gift. It buys a visit, and the visit is what the seller is actually purchasing.
How Pricing Works
Margins, anchors, list prices and where the number on the tag comes from.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
How Pricing Works
A price rise can arrive as a smaller pack
Quantity sits on the same shelf as price, and moving it produces a rise that most shoppers never register.
How Pricing Works
Some prices can move and some cannot, and sellers know which
How far demand falls when a price rises decides which items get pushed up, which get discounted, and which never change at all.
How Pricing Works
The exchange rate moved months ago and the shelf has not heard
Imported goods are priced from the rate a buyer locked in long before the stock arrived, not from the rate on the news today.
How Pricing Works
Costs go up like a rocket and come down like a feather
Input prices fall as often as they rise, but the tag rarely reflects both movements with the same speed or the same enthusiasm.
How Pricing Works
Whether tax sits inside the number changes what you are comparing
The same item can be advertised with sales tax included or excluded, and the two figures answer completely different questions.
How Pricing Works
Free is a price, and it behaves like no other number
Dropping a charge to nothing does not simply reduce it a little further; it changes how the whole offer gets judged.
How Pricing Works
When every shop shows the same number, something upstream decided it
Identical prices across unrelated sellers are rarely coincidence, and the reasons run from the entirely ordinary to the legally…
How Pricing Works
A repair bill is mostly time, and time is priced differently from things
Service pricing starts from an hour rather than an object, which is why two quotes for the same job can look nothing alike.