The Weird World Of Economics

Why Consumers Are Terrible At Remembering Store Prices

Consumer researchers know that people are terrible at remembering store prices: two seconds after taking a product from a shelf, the average person has roughly a 50 percent chance of remembering how much it cost. But few researchers have examined why some prices are more memorable than others.

According to a new study, it is a matter of syllables. Each extra syllable in the price reduces the chances of it being recalled by 20 percent, according to the study, which will be published in the September issue of The Journal of Consumer Research. In other words, someone faced with a $77.51 camera (eight syllables) and a $62.30 bookshelf (five syllables) is about 60 percent more likely to forget the camera’s price than the bookshelf’s, after half a minute.

“The way information goes from the environment to your memory, there is this phonetic loop which is a two-second buffer,” said Xavier Drèze, one of the study’s authors.

Hungarians are far better than Americans at recalling long prices; on average, they can recall 19 to 24 syllables with decent accuracy, while Americans can recall only 13. The authors suggested that this was because Hungarians speak 41 percent faster, both out loud and when repeating sounds to themselves “subvocally.”

posted by UncommonBusiness @ 11:10 PM