Equivalent facts can lead to different choices depending on how they are framed.
More quotesA £150 jar of coffee sounds like evidence in a fraud trial. Thirty pence for a coffee sounds prudent. Divide one by the other and you get a capsule, a machine and an actor looking pleased with everybody.
The cleverness was not hiding the price. It was moving the mental shelf. Nespresso avoided comparison with granules in a supermarket and invited comparison with coffee bought from a café. Against one reference it is absurd; against the other it is thrift with crema. The aluminium pod does economic stagecraft before the machine heats up.
This is why every subscription now costs “less than a coffee a day”. It can illuminate the trade. Software that saves an hour should perhaps compete with an hour of wages. A meal kit may deserve comparison with a takeaway ordered in defeat at 8.40pm. But daily arithmetic can also perfume an annual bill. One pound a day still means £365 leaving the account, however jauntily it is portioned.
There is no honest universal comparison set waiting to be discovered. A product competes with whatever sacrifice feels real to the buyer: money, time, risk, irritation or another small luxury. Choose a frame that reveals that exchange and customers may finally see the value. Choose one that conceals the total and they will see the trick—usually around renewal day.