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0 pointsmcv7y ago0 comments

Do we really need to deconstruct all of economics here? The market consists of those individual buyers and sellers. But they set the value together. No single buyer can set the value of the items they want to buy in the supermarket. They buy them or they don't buy them. In response to that, the seller adjusts the price. If not enough people buy it, the seller lowers the price, if he runs out too fast, he raises the price. That is "the market" determining the price in a free market.

So if a potential buyer sees something 70% discounted, that implies that originally, the market determined that higher price as a fair price: a price that at least some buyers would pay for this item. The buyer trusts the market that that is apparently a fair price, but today the buyer is in luck, because it's been discounted to below the usual market price!

If the seller advertises with a fake discount, he's betraying the buyer's trust in the free market by intentionally lying about what the market is willing to pay for this item.

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lotsofpulp7y ago· 2 in thread

>So if a potential buyer sees something 70% discounted, that implies that originally, the market determined that higher price as a fair price: a price that at least some buyers would pay for this item. The buyer trusts the market that that is apparently a fair price, but today the buyer is in luck, because it's been discounted to below the usual market price!

This whole paragraph is wrong in my opinion. A 70% discount does NOT imply anything other than it's 70% off of some number that the seller is free to decide, since they own the product they are selling and I'm not aware of any laws dictating what they have to sell at.

The second part I don't agree with is a seller selling at "below" market price. There is no such thing, unless the seller is doing charity work. When a sale happens, that is at the market price, unless of course there is some collusion where the buyer and seller agree to do some other trade-off to avoid paying taxes, but that's neither here nor there in this conversation.

On popular sale days, such as Black Friday, the sellers aren't selling below market price. They are selling at the price that they think they need to in order to get the publicity/feet in the door that they think will lead to other sales. In effect, the seller is buying the buyer's time and attention and whatever probability the buyer has of spending more money on other things with the "discount" they offered.

mcvOP7y ago

We're not talking about what the law says, we're talking about whether it's misleading.

If the amount from which it was discounted is utterly meaningless, then why mention it at all? Because the seller wants the buyer to believe the item is more valuable than it really is. That's why it's misleading.

The fact that the deception is legal, doesn't mean it's not deceptive. It is deceptive. It is very clearly, obviously, intentionally deceptive. The seller wants the buyer to believe they're getting a great deal that they're not getting, because the product was never actually meaningfully sold at that original price. That original price only exists to mislead the buyer.

lotsofpulp7y ago

Real life shows there exists a population of buyers that would prefer store A than store B in the example below:

Store A: sells item X at 80% off for $10 Store B: sells item X for $10

It's Kohl's and Bed Bath and Beyond and JCPenney's entire business model. Some people love waiting for their coupons at home and figuring out where they can get the most "%" off.

Should we outlaw store A?

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