The real price of “low price”

Falling for the attraction of EDLP or Everyday Low Price is almost like trading free speech for free beer. “Monopoly is good so long as the price is low because of it” is something that many big corporations have argued for and continue to argue for. What we miss to see in the argument is the real price of “low price”.

Low price is a simple ploy, that often goes unnoticed, to let us lose our independence and access to choices and agency to decide better for ourselves. We simply write them as invisible checks to the player, falling for the allure of his low price proposition.

By removing choices, the player usurps power from its users, and what appears as customer obsession leads to silent customer repression. With brilliant marketing on low prices and a super delightful user experience, we are in fact made to look forward to repression. Customer bondage, power extraction plays in the dark while customer experience gleams through to bedazzle us.

Price is a visible and convenient metric while choice, independence and liberty are hidden and fuzzy. Fuzziness is leveraged cleverly to extract power from users. Calling it “predatory pricing” is fine but we tend to lose sight of the real victims. It’s not just the competition but also the very users buying into it.

In the words of Seth Godin: “Perhaps the reason price is all your customers care about is because you haven’t given them anything else to care about.”