While shopping for an item today I was surprised to see how the price for it in one store in particular had it listed for about 30% higher than most other places. That is quite a substantial difference too. While thinking why that would be the case what I did notice was that in terms of merchandising techniques they seemed to put it next to other products in the order of being the cheapest to most expensive. Usually too when people aren’t too knowledgeable about a product they would assume the more expensive item must be the best. As evident the item that was pried in the middle of it all seemed to be moving the most.

I know that can be true for even myself such as when I am buying things like groceries. That’s not a bad way to get people buy buy particular items that you are trying to get rid of I suppose. For a savvy shopper that can be a negative too as people can often become cynical in even doing further business with a company if they see even this one item is marked up like crazy compared to other places.

How many people would honestly do price comparison shopping when it comes to purchasing simple prescribed medicine from the doctor? I think for most the natural assumption is when the doctor give you the prescription note you would then simply give it to a pharmacist and get the prescription. Today I was being told how most pharmacies that are located say within the same building of a medical building or doctors office tend to jack up the prices. Granted that may be due to various issues such as building rental fees that may cost more. To me I guess that is just like any other company charging a premium for the convenience factor and taking advantage of the location.

The person was then telling me how if you ever want to save money on items like those it’s usually a lot cheaper to go elsewhere to get your prescriptions such as in the grocery stores that have a pharmacy. Just kind of feels weird to implement that kind of mindset when it comes to a scenario where you would think you can just freely follow a person’s direction as it is a health issue huh?

Recently there was this printing company here that created some dialogue in terms of how expensive it is to print certain items such as business cards and photos. I think for things like a photo reproduction it was about $2 a print. Some people mentioned that was an extremely high price while some threw in a comment how you should pay for it anyways if you are a professional. They were even mocked too for even allowing price to be a factor while being labeled as not taking their professions seriously.

That’s interesting I thought as this kind of reminded me of big brand named sunglasses. Essentially, a lot of them probably cost about $20 to $30 for the retail store to acquire and yet they still sell it for a crazy marked up price like say $200. Now in those situations, many times it is because the manufacturer demands that its products be sold at those high prices to maintain its image.

At the same time, you then have many consumers saying how the product is so much better than a standard one and that you should just pay for the best if you want to look the best. Times like those I would tend to agree that if there was simply more competition the price would drop like a rock or that you can simply find something very similar for less.

I think when you are starting out on anything it can be a tough decision unless you already have the name or recognition where people would not pre-judge you based on the tools that you use to portray yourself. Then again, some professions like a real estate agent usually requires them to maintain that expensive image.

I suppose justifying a high price tag for an item that is marked up extremely high in a business sense can be more about politics than the quality itself.

As mentioned many times, usually when you see sale signs indicating that an item is say 50% off you still have to do your due diligence as that sale price may not be all that it seems. As many of you may know, the business Linens N’ Things has recently started a going out of business sale and stores are advertising a 10% to 30% off on all the products in the store.

I must have passed at least two of these stores here recently and they sure know how to draw a crowd with these big yellow signs plastered everywhere about them going out of business. From my experience though, this is one of the most expensive retail places there is to buy stuff. Even with the discount, from what I saw it was still more expensive than other places most of the time

Someone then just recently forwarded me this video about one of the stores in the US and it was a pretty interesting watch. Essentially, it looked like someone got lazy in the company and in the process of changing prices they simply just stuck a new price tag over the old one. That sure didn’t make them look too good. You can watch the video at

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/17851557/index.html

In all fairness, sometimes a business does have to mark up prices in order to adapt to the market condition. While that may have been the case here too, this was a great possible example I thought on how you have to be careful in not placing all your trust and judgment on those sale signs to be certain that you are getting a good value.