By Ashley Bailey – founder and CEO of Dig, the AI-powered shopping platform.
“Only 2 left in stock.” “Sale ends in ten minutes.” “Was £120, now £59.99.” None of these are really incidental; they’re manufactured.
This isn’t abstract for me. There was a period, before I started the company I now run, when I had to account for every single pound that came in and went out. That period of my life is why I do this work: I got tired of feeling like the odds were stacked against ordinary shoppers, and wanted to build something that puts real deals back into people’s hands.
Retail pricing is a science, built on decades of behavioural research into exactly what makes us click “buy now” instead of thinking it over. Understanding how it works is, in my view, the single most useful tool a shopper can have nowadays.
Why Urgency Messaging Works on Our Brains
Scarcity signals and countdown timers work because they trigger loss aversion, our instinct to weigh the fear of missing out more heavily than the appeal of gaining something. That instinct is powerful, and it’s specifically designed to bypass the slower, more rational part of our brain that would otherwise compare prices or sleep on a decision. It’s not a coincidence that so many “deals” come with a ticking clock attached.
Anchoring: How a Crossed-Out Price Distorts Perception
A “was” price sets a reference point in our minds, and everything that follows gets judged against it, whether or not that original price was ever genuinely charged in the first place. The bigger the gap between the two numbers looks, the better the deal feels, almost entirely independent of whether it represents real value.
Decoy Pricing and Bundle Tactics
Three-tier pricing structures often exist purely to make the middle option look like the sensible, moderate choice by comparison, even when it isn’t the best value on its own merits. Bundling a low-value item together with a high-value one works in a similar way, making it harder to judge what you’re actually paying for either.
Black Friday: The Playbook in Full Effect
If you want to see every one of these tactics deployed at once, look no further than Black Friday. I’ve discussed this on television before, and it holds true every year: countdown timers, “was” prices that were barely charged at all, decoy bundles, and doorbuster stock counters ticking down in real time. It’s the most concentrated masterclass in retail psychology of the entire calendar, precisely because retailers know shoppers arrive primed to expect genuine bargains, and are far less inclined to check.
The uncomfortable truth is that this playbook doesn’t switch off for eleven months and reappears only in November. It’s happening again right now. As I write this, retailers are already gearing up their back-to-school sales for September, using many of the same scarcity and anchoring tactics on parents facing a fresh wave of essential spending on uniforms, shoes and stationery. If anything, back-to-school deals deserve more scrutiny than Black Friday, not less, since the spending is unavoidable rather than optional, and families are under real pressure to act quickly.
How to Spot a Genuine Discount
In a survey of 1,000 UK shoppers I commissioned earlier this year, 85% said they’d found a cheaper price elsewhere after already completing a purchase, and 80% said they don’t fully trust a search engine’s top results to reflect the genuinely best price available. That gap between what shoppers see and what’s actually true is exactly where these psychological tactics do their work. Price history matters far more than a single “was” figure, and it’s worth checking before you trust any headline discount.
My Top Tips for Outsmarting the Deal Machine
- Check a product’s price history before buying, rather than trusting a single “was” price at face value.
- Give yourself a 24-hour rule before buying anything driven by a countdown timer or “low stock” warning.
- Compare across at least two or three retailers before accepting a “lowest price” claim (or better still, joindig.com can compare hundreds of prices in seconds).
- Look closely at tiered pricing, and ask what the cheapest option is genuinely missing before assuming the “recommended” one is best value.
- Don’t assume new is always better value; pre-loved and refurbished options are often overlooked.
- Unsubscribe from retailer marketing that consistently uses manufactured urgency, if you notice it affecting your spending.
- Set yourself a personal cooling-off period for larger purchases.
- Remember that a “deal” is only genuinely good if you were already planning to buy the item in the first place.
As founder of Dig, the AI shopping platform I built after going through exactly that experience, I spend my working life studying these patterns, which is precisely why I’m so sceptical of most “deals” I see myself.
About the expert
Ashley Bailey is the founder and CEO of Dig, an AI-powered shopping platform helping consumers find the best prices and pre-loved alternatives. A former Google and Telefónica/Wayra tech entrepreneur, Ashley regularly comments on AI, retail and consumer behaviour in the trade press.
