Once read an interesting story on how the price of a product is detemined. In a nutshell it was something like: a study says for product X, 30% of people are willing to give 2$, 50% are willing to give 3$ and 20% are willing to give 4$. You as the seller want to take as many as the buyers money but at the same time want to attract as many buyers for your product. So the strategy is to set the price to, say 3$. 50% of the people are willing to buy the product at that price so why not take advantage of it. The ones that are willing to give 4$ are gonna see a bargain in the 3$ price so you have 70%. But because this is America, you also want the people who are willing to give only 2$. Specially for them you print coupons for that product, coupons that give them, say 75 cents off. They will want the product and will definetly use the coupon. So tehnically you have 100%. The whole thing seem brilliant to me, as you are selling the product for as much as you can.
The thing that kind of surprised me is that people around here do use the coupons. I mean, this is seen as a way to save money and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
I would like to see how this would work for a famous supermarket in .ro / Although I doubt this will ever work. But if the economic situation gets worse and worse, who knows?