1 + 1 or wasting won?
By Janice Roh and Yeji Chun
Edited by Sarah Ryu
Design by Nicole Yang
Edited by Sarah Ryu
Design by Nicole Yang
Consumers in the 21st century are in war with pricing in supermarkets. To sell goods, supermarkets, specifically Emart, is deceiving customers by using 1+1, special packaging, and other methods of selling merchandise.
“When I see 1+1, I automatically want to buy it because it seems like a great deal,” Jun commented. To fool the customer, Emart was found to be raising the value of the regular priced goods and then place the goods on sale at a price that is actually higher than the original. It was the beginning of 2015, when two sets of Tefal pans were on sale for ₩42,000 at EMart mall. The fact that 48% was discounted from the product made the pan an irresistible product for consumers. Creating unprecedented discounts, EMart made it impossible for customers to keep away from clicking the “purchase immediately" button. But were the frying pans really on a sixday sale? In fact EMart has sold two sets in the frying pan for a price of ₩ 42,500 in December of 2014. Then in the beginning of 2015, the price rose to ₩ 80,800, and they pretended to put them on a 48% six day sale at the price of ₩ 42,000. After the special “sale” was over, the item was sold at the expensive price of ₩ 80,800. In other words, Emart raised the value of the regularpriced pans and then placed them on sale at a price that is actually higher than the original cost. Fortunately, a businessman, identified as “PomPu” (who wishes to stay anonymous because of the fear of being backlashed by Emart), was angered by the rapid price changes, created a “Emart price checker” app. He said that he got the idea from “camelcamelcamel.com”, (website known for tracking goods on Amazon). An application he created for the purpose of his own good has turned into a countrywide famous invention. The app is rather simple. The price of every merchandise sold by EMart would be recorded everyday. The information collected daily is shown through a graph where customers can easily judge if the price is reasonable. The more time passes, the more information there will be on the graph. This makes the app even more efficient because customers can then compare current prices with prices from a year ago. Customers can now be informed about deceptive pricing in stores. |
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