The power of suggestion

My wife came home the other day with five boxes of Yogos snacks for the kids. Five boxes? They were 5 for $10, she said. Today she came home with three bags of Chex Mix -- and again I got the "3fer" response. Now, of course, I explained that it's not that you HAVE to buy that many, it's just an old merchandising trick -- but it works.

I recently read a Seth Godin blog about the marketing strategy of "triangualtion". If you have two products, one lower price and one a little higher, chances are you're going to sell a lot more of the lower priced product. But, if you have a third product at a pricing level that's significantly higher than the other two, chances are now that you may choose the middle-priced item.

There are a million ways to merchandise and market -- sometimes the best ones are the simplest.