Author: Simon Attard
A coffee taught me more about pricing than any spreadsheet
Gusti, a social food and cocktail venue we work with, sells a lot of coffee. And I have watched something happen at their counter hundreds of times that no pricing model ever fully captures. Two people can pay the same amount for the same cup and walk away feeling completely differently about it. One feels looked after. The other feels charged. Same number, same product, two entirely different judgments.
That gap is the whole game. Because customers almost never judge a price on its own. They judge what they believe the price means, and they do it in seconds, mostly without noticing they are doing it at all.
The price tag is never judged on its own
We like to imagine buyers as rational. They are not, and neither are we. The moment someone sees a number, their mind reaches for something to compare it to. This is anchoring, and it is one of the most reliable patterns in how people form price perceptions. Put a higher option next to the one you want to sell and the middle suddenly feels sensible. Show the original price crossed out and the new one feels like a win.
Elie Ofek, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School, puts it plainly : “Perceptions matter, so businesses have to be careful about how and what they charge.” His work on tiered pricing, anchoring and charm pricing all points to the same underlying truth. The question is not simply what to charge. It is how to structure the offer so the customer walks away feeling they made the right decision.
What customers are really asking when they see a number
Beneath every price sits a quiet question the customer is asking themselves: is this fair, and is it worth it to me. Fairness and worth are different things, and both are emotional before they are logical.
Worth is perceived value. It is the size of the benefit they believe they are getting, weighed against what they are giving up. Fairness is about trust. It is whether the number feels honest, whether it reflects what they think it actually costs you to deliver, whether they feel respected or worked. When both land well, the price feels right and the sale feels easy. When either one wobbles, the customer hesitates, and hesitation is where deals quietly die.
This is why two businesses can charge the same and get very different reactions. One has built the perception. The other has only set the number.
The tactic that wins the sale and loses the relationship
Here is where I want to complicate the picture, because the psychology of pricing is often sold as a bag of tricks. Prices ending in .99. False urgency. Fees that appear at checkout. These tactics work in the narrow sense that they can nudge a single purchase. But they carry a cost that rarely shows up in the same month it is earned.
There is a strong argument, made well by voices in ethical brand marketing, that manipulation erodes trust the moment it is noticed, and customers notice more than we assume. A price that feels engineered to trick signals dishonesty, and it can undo months of relationship building in a single glance. For any business that depends on people coming back, and most good businesses do, a clever trick that costs you trust is a bad trade. You can win the transaction and lose the customer.
I am not against psychology in pricing. I am against using it to deceive. Used with integrity, the same understanding helps customers see real value more clearly. Used to manipulate, it teaches them to distrust you.
Why underpricing quietly tells people your work is cheap
There is an opposite mistake, and it is more common among good, honest operators than most will admit. They price too low. It feels safe, generous, even humble. In reality it often sends the exact message they were trying to avoid.
A low price is information. When the work is genuinely strong, a nervous price can quietly tell the market that even you are not sure it is worth much. The right buyers read that signal and move on, because a price that undercuts the value also undercuts the confidence. Pricing is not only what you charge. It is a statement about what you believe you are worth, and people are listening to that statement whether you meant to make it or not.
The real job is not lowering the price, it is raising the perception
If value is judged on perception, then the smartest commercial move is rarely to drop the number. It is to make the value visible enough that the number feels obvious.
This is exactly the work behind a premium brand done properly. When we redesigned the digital presence for GROHE with Alfred Hili and Co, the point was never to argue people into paying more for a tap. It was to present a premium product the way a premium product deserves, with a product led experience, considered visuals and clarity that let the quality speak for itself. When the perception of value matches the reality of the
product, the price stops being a hurdle and becomes part of the story.
That is what good positioning does. It does not shout about price. It changes what the price feels like.
So before you touch your prices, look at your perception. What does your brand say you are worth. What are customers comparing you to.
Where does trust leak, and where is your value invisible even though it is real. Those questions move the needle far more than another discount ever will.
How MYC Delivers This
This is the work we care about at MYC. When we built the brand identity for Investate, a financial services business where trust is everything, the goal was to make credibility and value visible, so the offer felt as serious and considered as it actually was. That is the quiet mechanics of pricing power: clarity, positioning and trust, built so the price feels fair before anyone questions it. If you sense your value is not landing the way it should, take a look at our work, and let us help you make it clear.