I think I feel a conspiracy being played out.
When I bought toiletries in SM recently, my change boiled down to several pesos and centavos. The cashier asked me if it's all right with me if she retain the cents since she did not have any smaller denomination other than one peso coins. I agreed.
Then, in another day, I bought some stuff from Watson's and the same thing happened. I was supposed to be given 75 cents as change but the cashier said she didn't have any centavo coins so she took the 75 cents from me as well.
Only last week, I began to realize that something was indeed amiss. Again, I was buying stationery in SM and the change boiled down to, you guess it, centavos. This time, the cashier didn't bother asking me the rhetorical question and just gave my change minus the extra centavos.
I could not help but think if this was a strategy of sorts, a way to glean extra profit from the consumer in the form of withholding change. Sure, centavos mean little but if you can imagine SM doing this to the millions of its patrons, those centavos can leave a very big impact in the bottom line.
If we play this out even more, we could ask, "What if SM is indeed playing with the pricing strategy?" What if it's intentionally including centavos in its price mark-ups so the scheme mentioned above can play out?
Interesting.
When I bought toiletries in SM recently, my change boiled down to several pesos and centavos. The cashier asked me if it's all right with me if she retain the cents since she did not have any smaller denomination other than one peso coins. I agreed.
Then, in another day, I bought some stuff from Watson's and the same thing happened. I was supposed to be given 75 cents as change but the cashier said she didn't have any centavo coins so she took the 75 cents from me as well.
Only last week, I began to realize that something was indeed amiss. Again, I was buying stationery in SM and the change boiled down to, you guess it, centavos. This time, the cashier didn't bother asking me the rhetorical question and just gave my change minus the extra centavos.
I could not help but think if this was a strategy of sorts, a way to glean extra profit from the consumer in the form of withholding change. Sure, centavos mean little but if you can imagine SM doing this to the millions of its patrons, those centavos can leave a very big impact in the bottom line.
If we play this out even more, we could ask, "What if SM is indeed playing with the pricing strategy?" What if it's intentionally including centavos in its price mark-ups so the scheme mentioned above can play out?
Interesting.
1 comment:
I hope they dont teach that to their cashiers.
Thinking about it, if that is plotted, then that would've been a way to evade tax too.
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