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Be unaffordable
I found myself chuckling with glee recently as I loaded up my supermarket trolley with an unbelievable £2 chicken offer. But as I wandered around the store, I began to worry. What kind of life must that chicken have lived? What corners had they cut to price a chicken at £2? And I was about to serve it to my kids. They’d probably sprout a pair of breasts.
Price isn’t just about affordability. It’s an incredibly powerful signal of many subconscious values.
A great example is ‘Veblen goods’. Named after Thorstein Veblen, a US economist and social scientist who, in 1899, coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption’, these are commodities such as perfume and watches that become more desirable the more expensive they are.
‘What ...
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