Recently, after purchasing a new vehicle, I was reminded how much of an indicator pricing plays in our perception of value.
In contrast to the normal horror stories, our car buying experience was more than comfortable. My wife and I did a lot of internet research before hand, so by the time we visited the dealership we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for. We found the vehicle for us, at the price we were looking for and we bought it. Simple as that.
It wasn’t until I visited the tag agency to get the title and registration processed that ran into a price made me question the value of what I was paying for. On my old car, I had a customized license plate supporting my alma mater, and in order to transfer the tag to my new vehicle, I had to mail in $1 dollar to the Oklahoma Tax Commission. That’s right 1 whole dollar!
You’ve got to be kidding me!
Nevermind the fact that stamp prices are almost half that. And since I couldn’t mail cash, once you factor in the time it takes to write the check, address the envelope, slap the stamp on it and mail the buck, that dollar is has become a worthless pain. And let’s not forget the time it will take the state employee to open my letter and process my request. That dollar was spent well before it arrived.
I started thinking about this later. It occurred to me that if I had to have mailed in say $10 instead of the $1 then I probably wouldn’t have even questioned it. But because $1 was such a small increment, I started questioning the value of the process and wondering why if that is all they were requesting did they even need the dollar at all?
What are prices saying about your brand’s value?
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