What is price anchoring?

The tendency to judge a price against the first number you encountered rather than against the market. Because the first number is usually chosen by the seller, it heavily shapes what feels expensive.

Why is the middle option so often chosen?

With three tiers, the cheapest reads as a compromise and the dearest as indulgent, leaving the middle feeling like good judgement. Sellers can move average spend simply by changing what sits in the middle.

How do I avoid being anchored?

You cannot switch it off, so supply your own anchor first — decide what the item is worth to you, and check the market price, before you look at the seller’s number.

Why the first price you see decides the rest

Show someone an expensive option first and everything after it looks reasonable.

Updated 2 September 2026 · 2 min read

Ask what a jumper should cost and most people cannot answer. Show them a jumper at one price and then another at a lower one, and they will tell you confidently which is good value.

That is anchoring. Absolute prices are almost impossible to judge, relative ones are easy, so we quietly convert every absolute question into a relative one — and whichever number arrived first becomes the yardstick.

How shops set the anchor

The expensive option you were never meant to buy

A premium model placed at the top of a range often exists to make the one below it look sensible. It may sell in small numbers and still earn its place, because its job is to be the reference point rather than the purchase. Remove it and the middle option looks expensive instead of reasonable.

Three tiers, and the middle one

Offer three versions and most people take the middle. The cheapest feels like a compromise, the dearest feels indulgent, the middle feels like judgement. Which option occupies the middle is a decision the seller makes, and it moves the average spend without changing a single price.

The crossed-out number

The most direct form. A struck-through price is an anchor supplied by the seller, placed millimetres from the price they want you to accept, arriving before you have had a chance to form your own.

Expensive neighbours

Shelf position does the same work. Put a costly brand beside a mid-priced one and the mid-priced one reads as good value. Nothing about it changed except what it is standing next to.

Why knowing does not help much

Anchoring is unusually stubborn. It has been demonstrated with numbers that were obviously irrelevant, and with people told in advance exactly what was being done to them. The adjustment happens during perception, before deliberate thought gets involved, so being informed lets you argue with the effect — not avoid it.

Bring your own anchor

Since you cannot stop the mechanism, supply the input instead. Arrive with a number, and the seller's number becomes the thing being judged.

Decide what it is worth to you before you look at prices. Not what it costs. What you would pay. Written down or said out loud, so it is fixed.
Get the market price first. Check what the item costs across several retailers before opening the page you intend to buy from.
Judge against the market, never against the crossed-out price. One is data, the other is a claim by an interested party.
Be suspicious of the middle option. Ask what you actually need rather than which tier feels balanced.

It works on time too

The same effect governs waiting. Once you have seen a low price, later prices feel like losses, and people routinely refuse a perfectly fair price because a better one existed once. The remembered number has become the anchor, and it is doing damage rather than protecting you.

The price you saw before is gone. The only useful question is what the item costs across the market today.