My friend Wikipedia recently explained to me that a “loss leader” is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to draw customers into a store where they are likely to buy other goods.
The vendor expects that the typical customer will purchase other items at the same time as the loss leader and that the profit made on these items will be such that an overall profit is generated for the vendor.
My personal favorite example of this principle is the famous Costco rotisserie chicken.
We have been on quite a rotisserie chicken kick at our house lately. Costco’s is so good and so easy to use in a million things.
The $4.99 Kirkland Signature rotisserie chicken is considered Costco’s most iconic and effective loss leader, designed to drive foot traffic into the store, foster loyalty from its customers, and increase the average order size.
It has remained at the same price since 2009 and Costco sacrifices over $30–$40 million on rotisserie chicken every year!
But tell me the last time you went into Costco for a rotisserie chicken and left with just a rotisserie chicken.
Exactly.
I’ve decided that just like Costco, our brains have their own loss leaders. They offer us a cheap thought that gets us to buy a whole cart of more expensive ones.
“I’m probably bothering them.”
“I’m behind.”
“I’ll just skip today.”
“I’ve already blown it.”
“This always happens to me.”
Those initial thoughts seem pretty inexpensive when they first show up, but often they quietly lead us toward filling an entire cart with a costly heap of anxiety, avoidance, comparison, guilt, catastrophizing, isolation, shame, perfectionism, and giving up.
So how do we avoid filling the cart after that first cheap thought?
Here are three questions to try:
- What’s the first thought that got me into this store?
- What else have I added to the cart because I believed that first thought?
- Which of these “purchases” do I actually want to keep?
I can’t wait to hear about what usually ends up in your cart. And if you’d like some help putting a few things back on the shelf, I’d love to help.
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PS If you liked this post – or any others, I’d love you to pass me and my work on to a friend. They can find out much more about me here if they’re interested!
