Recently there has been this food ordering app called Ritual here where you can apparently order food from participating restaurants and skip the lines. From what I gather once you order it and arrive at the restaurant you can get the meal right away. The promotion is advertised as you can buy a meal from any of the restaurants for only one dollar with a maximum of five redemptions. Sounds super cheap where it’s silly to not take advantage of right?
It got me thinking though where sometimes companies just offer the items for free whereas in this case they just charge super little. Are you inclined to care if it is one dollar or free in this case assuming you were presented with the offer for the first time? In many cases I would think a lot of people would still impulsively take advantage of the deal even with a tiny price like this attached to it. But with that in mind would you ever offer a deal at one cent as opposed to just free just to make something? Or would that one cent actually deter you offer from buying things like a meal from a restaurant?
In some crazy way psychologically I would imagine like here many people would view the offer as like a huge Black Friday sale of sort. As well I think people are more inclined to pay for food with this strategy versus say a plastic toy that they had no intent of getting in the first place. Because with food you eat it every day and the savings can be a bit too tempting to pass up.