Tailor Prices Toward Names or Birthdays

Customers prefer stimuli that resemble themselves.

For example, people named Dennis are more likely to become dentists (Pelham et al., 2002). And this effect has been replicated (Chatterjee et al., 2023).

In other words, Fred is more likely to:

• Become a Firefighter
• Reside in Fresno
• Marry a Fiona

And...prefer prices with four or five (Coulter & Grewal, 2014).

For example, researchers sent cold emails to people from a university directory, asking them to participate in a study. They contacted people whose last names began with E or T (e.g., Edwards, Evans, Ellis, Thomas, Taylor, Turner).

These participants listened to a 15-20s commercial for a fake bicycle at $622 or $688.

• T-names preferred $622 (six-twenty-two)
• E-names preferred $688 (six-eighty-eight)

And it happens in the real world too.

Based on 3 years of sales at a car dealership, researchers compiled all buyers whose first initial shared the first initial with a digit — in other words, buyer names that started with:

• O: one
• T: two, three, ten, twelve
• F: four, five
• S: six, seven
• E: eight, eleven
• N: nine

Customers preferred deals when more digits matched their name. Especially outside digits (e.g., $45,891.54)

Birthdays trigger this effect too: Customers with a birthday on April 16 preferred $39.16 (rather than $39.11 or $39.21; Coulter & Grewal, 2014).

Caveats

• Large Purchases. You might need a big ticket purchase with price negotiability.
• Auditory Prices. Customers might need to hear prices (e.g., from a salesperson, TV commercial, podcast). Though written prices still worked if customers spoke these prices inside their head (Coulter & Grewal, 2014).

• Brendl, C. M., Chattopadhyay, A., Pelham, B. W., & Carvallo, M. (2005). Name letter branding: Valence transfers when product specific needs are active. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(3), 405-415.
• Chatterjee, P., Mishra, H., & Mishra, A. (2023). Does the first letter of one’s name affect life decisions? A natural language processing examination of nominative determinism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Coulter, K. S., & Grewal, D. (2014). Name-letters and birthday-numbers: Implicit egotism effects in pricing. Journal of Marketing, 78(3), 102-120.
• Dobson, J., Gorman, L., & Moore, M. D. (2010). Consumer choice bias due to number symmetry: evidence from real estate prices. Journal of Research for Consumers, 17(1).
• Pelham, B. W., Carvallo, M., & Jones, J. T. (2005). Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(2), 106-110.
• Pelham, B. W., Mirenberg, M. C., & Jones, J. T. (2002). Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions. Journal of personality and social psychology, 82(4), 469.