'Anchored'? How a Fake 'Original Price' Makes You Overspend

The Hook: A Story of Two Shirts

A consumer walks into a department store, searching for a new dress shirt. On a neatly organized table, they find a high-quality blue shirt. The price tag reads $60. The consumer’s internal monologue begins: “Sixty dollars. It’s a nice shirt, good color, feels like quality material. But is it a $60 shirt? It’s fine. Maybe I’ll look around some more and think about it.” The consumer feels logical, analytical, and in control. They are evaluating a cost.¹

Then, the consumer moves to the next section, drawn by a large, fluorescent red sign. There, they see the exact same blue shirt. But this rack is different. The sign screams “SALE!” and the price tag is a small drama in itself. It shows a price of $100, aggressively crossed out with a thick black line. Beneath it, in bold, it reads, “On Sale! 40% off! Only $60!”.¹

The psychological reaction is immediate and entirely different. The consumer’s pulse quickens. This is no longer a logical evaluation; it’s a discovery. The brain is no longer calculating, “Is this shirt worth $60?” Instead, it is celebrating, “I am saving $40!”

This simple change in presentation has reframed the entire transaction. The first scenario was a “cost” of $60—a financial loss to be weighed. The second scenario, thanks to the $100 anchor, has been transformed into a “gain” of $40 in savings. This perceived bargain triggers a small dopamine response ²; the consumer feels like a “smart shopper,” someone who has successfully spotted a deal.² They purchase the second shirt, feeling a sense of triumph.

It is the same shirt, for the same $60. Yet one feels like a “maybe” and the other feels like a “win.” The difference is the $100 anchor—a number that may have been a complete work of fiction. The consumer has just been “anchored,” a victim of the most powerful and pervasive psychological trick in the retail playbook.

The “Jedi Mind Trick” The Brain Plays on Itself

This potent phenomenon is known as the anchoring bias.⁴ It is a “pervasive cognitive bias” ⁵, a “faulty heuristic” ⁶, which is simply a term for a mental shortcut the brain uses to make decisions more efficiently.⁷ Human brains despise uncertainty, especially when it comes to quantitative judgments.⁹ When faced with a question like “What is a fair price for this shirt?” or “What should I offer for this house?”, the brain desperately searches for a starting point.

The anchoring bias is the tendency to “rely heavily on the first piece of information” received about a topic.⁴ That initial piece of information—a price, a statistic, a first impression—becomes the “anchor”.⁹

The cognitive process is known as the “anchoring-and-adjustment” heuristic.⁶ Once the anchor is set, the brain makes all subsequent judgments by “adjusting” from that starting point. But here is the critical flaw: these adjustments are almost always “insufficient”.⁶ If the anchor is high, the final estimate will be high. If the anchor is low, the final estimate will be low. The mind remains tethered to that initial number, “instead of seeing it objectively”.⁴

This is not a flaw exclusive to shopping; it is embedded in our core programming.

In Medicine: Anchoring bias can have life-or-death consequences. A physician’s first impression of a patient’s symptoms can become a powerful anchor, “influenc[ing] a physician’s ability to diagnose an illness” ¹⁰ and affecting all subsequent assessments.⁶ A 2023 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that when patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) presented to the emergency department (ED) with shortness of breath, physicians were less likely to test for a pulmonary embolism (PE)—a different, life-threatening condition—if the patient’s initial triage note mentioned CHF. The physicians “may anchor on such initial information,” causing “delayed workup and diagnosis of PE”.¹¹
In Negotiations: In a salary discussion, the first person to “name a number” often has the advantage.¹⁰ That first offer becomes the anchor that “strongly influences the discussion that follows” ¹², setting the “range of acceptable counteroffers”.¹⁰

This mental shortcut—this reliance on the first number—is most powerful when the brain is stressed, rushed, or distracted. Heuristics are used to make “judgments quickly and efficiently”.⁸ When a person is preoccupied or “short on time,” they are more likely to make “insufficient adjustments” from the anchor.⁵ This is why environments of “high cognitive load” ⁸—like a “limited-time” Black Friday sale ¹³ or a “lightning deal” with a countdown clock—are so effective. These environments are not just sales events; they are deliberately crafted to prevent the “slow,” “deliberate” ³ thinking required to overcome the anchor. The urgency is a tool to make the anchor more effective.

The Wheel of Fortune and the Birth of a Bias

To understand just how irrational and powerful this bias is, one must travel back to 1974 and a “groundbreaking” ¹⁴ experiment by the godfathers of behavioral psychology, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.³ They wanted to know: does an anchor even need to be relevant to work?

In their famous study, they brought in participants and had them spin a “wheel of fortune.” This wheel, however, was rigged to land on only two numbers: 10 or 65.¹³

A participant would step up and spin the wheel. It would click, click, click… and stop on 10. The researcher would then ask two questions ¹³:

“Is the percentage of African countries in the United Nations higher or lower than 10%?”
“What is your actual estimate of the percentage of African countries in the UN?”

The participant would, of course, answer “higher” to the first question and then give their estimate. The researchers repeated this process with other participants, for whom the wheel landed on 65.

The results were staggering. The “random number had an ‘anchoring’ effect”.¹³

The group that saw the number 10 (anchored low) gave a median estimate of 25%.¹⁷
The group that saw the number 65 (anchored high) gave a median estimate of 45%.¹⁷

A completely “arbitrary” ³, “random” ¹³, and “irrelevant” ¹⁴ number from a carnival game fundamentally skewed the participants’ answers to a question of general knowledge. They knew the number was random, yet their brains “anchored” to it anyway.

This experiment reveals a crucial insight. If the human brain can be so easily swayed by a number it knows is random, its vulnerability to an anchor that appears relevant is infinitely greater. The “Was $100” on a price tag is not perceived as a random number; it is processed as a “bona fide” piece of data, a “reference point”.⁴ Its plausibility makes it a much “stickier” and more powerful anchor than the 10 or 65 on the wheel. This perceived legitimacy causes the consumer to make an even more “insufficient adjustment,” locking in the belief that the “sale” price is, by comparison, a fantastic deal.

From the Lab to the Price Tag: The Retailer’s Arsenal

Retailers and marketers have, in effect, all read Kahneman and Tversky. They understand this psychology intimately and have built an entire “arsenal” of pricing strategies ²⁰ to “influence… willingness to pay” ²¹ and “guide” consumer purchasing decisions.²² They are experts at setting the anchor, almost like a “Jedi mind trick”.²³

Here is a field guide to their most common tactics:

Tactic 1: Strikethrough / “Was-Now” Pricing (The Classic)

This is the most common form of price anchoring ²⁴, also known as “strikethrough pricing” or “comparison pricing”.²⁵ It is the classic “$100 $75” tactic.²³ The “Was” price ($100) serves as the high anchor, making the “Now” price ($75) seem like a “deal” or a “win”.²⁶ An experiment by MIT and the University of Chicago famously tested a piece of women’s clothing at $34, $39, and $44. The item sold best at $39, because at that price point, researchers included a high anchor price.¹³

Tactic 2: The “Decoy Effect” (Tiered Pricing)

This is a more subtle, and arguably more brilliant, anchoring strategy. Retailers present “good, better, best” options.²¹ A behavioral economics study ¹ illustrates this perfectly with a smartwatch scenario:

Small Smartwatch: $700
Medium Smartwatch: $750
Large Smartwatch: $900

In this lineup, the $900 watch is the decoy anchor. It is not designed to sell. Its sole purpose is to make the $750 “Medium” watch “seem like the best deal”.¹ Consumers think, “Well, I’m not the cheapest, but I’m saving $150 compared to the most expensive one.” This strategy is used everywhere, from SaaS subscription plans ²⁷ to car-trim levels.²⁸

Tactic 3: The Vague “Compare At Price”

This is a favorite of the e-commerce world. Platforms like Shopify have two fields for sellers: “Price” and “Compare at Price”.²⁹ This “Compare at Price” is a purposefully ambiguous anchor. What is the consumer “comparing” it to? It could be the item’s former price. Or, as is often the case, it could be the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) ³², a competitor’s price, or just a vague “perceived worth”.³⁰ The ambiguity is the point: it provides the feeling of a discount, anchoring the consumer to a high number without making a specific, legally-binding claim.

Tactic 4: The “Original Price” Anchor (MSRP)

Sometimes, the anchor is set months or even years before a sale. The Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is often the “first price” a consumer ever sees for a new product, like a TV or a car.¹ This high number becomes the “reference point”.¹ Months later, when that $2,000 TV is featured in a Black Friday ad ¹³ for $1,500, the consumer is anchored to the $2,000 MSRP. They “bungee cord” back to that original number ¹, perceiving a $500 savings, even if the TV’s actual market value had been $1,600 for the last six months.

These tactics are rarely used in isolation. Retailers often “stack” anchors to create a powerful cascade of perceived value. An online product page may display:

MSRP: $199 (Anchor 1)
List Price: $179 (Anchor 2)
Was Price: $149 (Anchor 3) ³³
SALE PRICE: $129

The retailer’s goal is to make the consumer compare the $129 sale price to the $199 MSRP, creating an illusion of a massive $70 savings. They are actively trying to prevent the consumer from making the most logical comparison: $129 vs. the actual recent price of $149 (a modest $20 savings).

To help consumers identify these strategies, the following table breaks them down.

Table 1: The Retailer’s Anchoring Toolkit

Tactic Name	What It Looks Like (Example)	The Psychological Trick
Strikethrough (“Was/Now”) Pricing	Was $100, Now $75 ²³	The $100 anchor makes the $75 price feel like a $25 “win” or “gain” rather than a $75 “cost”.²⁶
Tiered (“Decoy”) Pricing	Basic: $10, Pro: $25, Premium: $40 ²¹	The $40 “Premium” option acts as a high anchor, making the $25 “Pro” price seem the most reasonable and “best value” choice.¹
“Compare At” Price	Compare At: $199 Your Price: $149 ³⁰	A vague anchor that implies a discount without making a specific, provable “former price” claim.²⁹
MSRP Anchoring	MSRP: $1,200 ¹	Sets a high, “official” price in the consumer’s mind long before a sale, making all future discounts seem larger by comparison.¹

A Bargain or a Lie? When a “Deal” Becomes Deceptive

When does this persuasive psychological nudge cross the line into a deceptive lie? The answer lies in the authenticity of the anchor itself. The problem is the use of “fictitious markdowns” ³⁴, “fictitious ‘regular’ prices” ³⁵, or “inflated reference prices”.³⁶ This is an “original” price that was never the real, bona fide price.³⁷

A simple example illustrates how this “deceptive price comparison” works.³⁷

A store normally sells a jacket for $100. This is its actual, prevailing market price.³⁸
To create a fake sale, the store artificially inflates the price to $150 for two weeks—a “brief period”.²⁶
Then, the store puts the jacket “on sale,” crossing out the phantom $150 price and selling it for its original $100 price. But now, it’s accompanied by a large “33% OFF!” sign.²⁶

The consumer, anchored to the $150, thinks they are getting a deal, but they are paying the normal price. This tactic is designed to create an “illusion of a steeper discount”.³⁶

According to consumer protection laws and legal experts, a reference price becomes deceptive when ³⁵:

It was never the price offered to the public, or was only offered for a “brief period.”
The “sale” runs so frequently or for so long that the “sale price” becomes the new regular price.
The reference price used (like an MSRP) is not, and never was, the actual “prevailing market price” in the marketplace.

This tactic of using a fake original price is a form of “information pollution.” It corrupts the consumer’s data set. By “artificially inflating the original price” ³⁶, retailers make it impossible for a consumer to determine an item’s actual value. The consumer is forced to rely only on the manipulated context the seller provides at the moment of purchase. This destroys the consumer’s ability to “shop around for better prices” ³⁹, because their baseline for what constitutes a “better” price is fictional.

The Price Police: The Lawsuits and the Regulators

This deceptive practice is not just unethical; it is illegal. And retailers are being sued for it constantly. In recent years, there has been a “spate of class-action complaints” ⁴⁰ against major retailers for “deceptive price anchoring”.⁴⁰

Case Study 1: The Department Store Crackdown

Major retailers have paid tens of millions of dollars to settle these claims.

JCPenney faced a class-action lawsuit in California and ultimately agreed to a $50 million settlement.³⁴ The lawsuit alleged that JCPenney engaged in a “scheme to fabricate false ‘original’ prices” and that the products were “never sold at the listed reference price”.³⁴
Kohl’s ⁴¹, Ralph Lauren ⁴³, and Ann Taylor / LOFT Outlet ⁴³ have all been hit with similar class-action lawsuits. The claims are consistent: the retailers used “inflated reference prices” to make discounts appear “bigger than they actually were”.⁴³

The legal argument in these cases is that consumers suffered an “economic injury”.⁴⁰ They were “led to believe… they received bargains” when, in fact, they did not.⁴⁰ The lawsuits argued that “but for… the false price information” ⁴⁰, consumers would not have made the purchase or would have paid less.

Case Study 2: The Amazon Prime Day “Fake Sale”

This is not just a brick-and-mortar problem. In 2025, a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed against Amazon, alleging its flagship “Prime Day” sale was built on “fake sales”.³⁹

The Allegation: The lawsuit claimed Amazon used “fictional” list prices to calculate its “Prime Day Percentage Discounts,” all under the “extreme time pressure of the brief Prime Day window”.³⁹
The Evidence: The complaint detailed specific examples. An 8-inch Android tablet for kids was listed as “40% off” its strikethrough list price of $119.99, making the “deal” price $72.18. However, the lawsuit alleged that in the 90 days leading up to the sale, the tablet’s median price was $72, and it had been sold for as low as $50. The “time-limited Prime Day Deal” was, in fact, just its normal price, and in some cases, higher than a recent non-sale price.³⁹

What the Law Actually Says (FTC)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has had rules against this for decades.⁴⁴ The FTC’s “Guides Against Deceptive Pricing” (16 CFR Part 233) ⁴⁵ are clear.

The Rule: A “former price” (a “Was” price) must be the “actual, bona fide price” at which the article was “offered… on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time”.⁴⁵
The Deception: The guides state it is a deceptive practice to establish an “artificial, inflated price” for the purpose of enabling a subsequent “large reduction”.⁴⁵

This legal risk explains the subtle but important linguistic differences consumers see online. This is why a platform like Shopify might default to the vague “Compare At” price ³⁰ and why Amazon’s system has both a “List Price” and a “Was Price”.³³ A “Was Price” or “Former Price” is a specific, factual claim that can be (and has been) proven false in a court of law.³⁴ A “Compare At” price, by contrast, is intentionally vague.³⁸ It could mean MSRP, a competitor’s price, or anything. It is a legally safer (though equally manipulative) anchor for retailers, as it avoids making a verifiable false statement in the same way a fake “Former Price” does.

Breaking the Spell: How to Become an “Un-Anchored” Shopper

The anchoring bias is “deeply rooted in human cognition”.⁵ It cannot be eliminated with a simple trick. But, its power can be recognized and mitigated. Consumers can build a new set of habits to “disarm” the anchor.

1. Acknowledge the Bias and Slow Down

The first and simplest step is “being aware of your bias”.46 Simply “knowing that the initial price… might be a tactic” 47 creates a critical distance. Anchoring is most powerful when consumers are “under time pressure”.3 The “limited time offer” is a device to prevent deliberate thought. The antidote is to “slow down”.3 A practical strategy for online shopping is to add items to a virtual cart but “not buy them until later,” perhaps “sleeping on it”.1 This defuses the artificial urgency and allows the rational brain to engage.

2. Drop Your Own Anchor (Conduct Research)

This is the single most powerful defense. Retailers set the anchor because consumers often have none. The solution is to “conduct independent research” 48 before shopping. By establishing “clear decision-making criteria” 48 and setting a “personal reference point” 47 based on actual value, the consumer creates their own anchor. This new, logical anchor, based on objective data, will override the retailer’s fabricated one.

3. Question the “Original” Price

Consumers can train themselves to “stay mindful” 48 of the anchors being presented. When seeing a “Was” price, one should ask critical questions: “When was it that price? For how long? Did anyone actually buy it at that price?”.42

4. Compare Across Items, Not Just This Item

Anchoring works by “narrowing our focus” 3 to a single item and its (fake) history. The defense is to “compare across items”.3 Instead of comparing that “on sale” box of laundry detergent to its own “was” price, “compare its price per ounce… to that of its competitors”.3 This breaks the anchor’s spell by introducing new, relevant data points.

5. Reframe the Math: From “Savings” to “Cost”

The retailer’s anchor is designed to frame the purchase as a “gain” in savings. Consumers can consciously “consider the opportunity cost” 1—the value of the “next-best alternative” that could be purchased with that money. This simple mental shift reframes the entire transaction, moving it from a perceived “gain” (“I’m saving $40!”) back to its true nature: a “cost” (“I’m spending $60”).

Ultimately, the “smart shopper” ² is not the one who blindly chases the biggest, reddest discount tag. The truly smart shopper is the one who can see the anchor, understand the psychological trick, and sail right past it—guided by their own map of an item’s true value.

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‘Anchored’? How a Fake ‘Original Price’ Makes You Overspend