Voluntary Price Discrimination of Batteries
Posted in Economics, Observation on July 22nd, 2010 by P. EconmancerTime for another “voluntary price discrimination” post. I feel like I should be posting on really hard hitting economic topics, but I keep running into these crazy pricing situations and I can’t help but share them.
Target sells single packs of the “2032″ size Energizer brand button batteries for $4.99 on the battery aisle. They sell double packs of the same Energizer batteries at the camera kiosk for $5.99.
How many people must run to the battery aisle and grab a couple of the single packs with no suspicion that a cheaper alternative is two aisles away? If I had to guess (just my speculation), the $5.99 two packs are at the camera kiosk to reward people that could be spending a lot of money on new electronic devices and the more expensive single packs are for the people just buying replacement batteries on a device they already own.
It almost worked, they almost got me. I was about to voluntary give Target an extra $4. I first went to the battery aisle and grabbed two single battery packages (~$10). Something told me to look closer. I made my way past the cameras and there it was, two for ~$6. I needed to buy two of these batteries for a little digital scale anyway, so the choice was easy.




You could argue that it’s gluten-free, but so are an number of the (Cheaper!) Oberto brand beef jerky flavors. I guess it’s for if you are really worried about the hormones and antibiotics they typically put in cows? I’d think if you’re the kind of person who worries about that, you’d probably also have issues with some of the features of beef jerky this organic alternative doesn’t address- the sodium level is an example that come to mind. Personally, I love beef jerky but I’ll stick to the non-organic brands.