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From: jab@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: McDonald's counter people - (nf)
Message-ID: <4749@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Jan-84 22:41:06 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4749
Posted: Mon Jan  2 22:41:06 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 01:26:34 EST
Lines: 36

#R:pucc-h:-41300:uokvax:2200018:000:1289
uokvax!jab    Jan  1 15:08:00 1984

I seem to remember something called "suggestive selling" (or something like
that) being mentioned to me by an old college roommate. It goes something
like this:

Joe:	I'd like a Coke.
Counter-person (CP): Would you like medium?
Joe:	Umm, what sizes are there?
CP:	There are small, medium, and large (where "small" is priced as 
	"1/2 of a medium for 3/4 the price" and "large" is priced
	well, but comes close to a couple of quarts!).
Joe:	Err. (You can see that he's been manipulated into getting the
	mdeium.) Medium. And a hamburger.
CP:	The regular size?
Joe:	Ahh, well, what is there?
CP:	There's dinky-and-expensive, regular, and jumbo. ("jumbo," I might
	add, is the size of a washtub.)
Joe:	Sure, the regular.
CP:	Okay. We have a special today: the apple pie is only (some enormous
	sum). Would you like one? (Strange, the "special today" has been
	apple/cherry pie for three weeks!)
Joe:	Fine. How much is that?
CP:	$8.
Joe:	Good god, how did it get to be so much?
CP:	I don't know. You bought the most economical choices. (Read: we
	manipulated you (the mass of customers) into making the largest
	profits for us.)

I stopped finding this distasteful several years ago: I now find it "amusing".
I don't like it, either.

	Jeff Bowles
	AT&T/(what was that name again?)
	Lisle, IL