How can a bottle of multi-vitamin (all vitamins together) usually be the same price as a bottle of others vitamins alone?
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There are many fraudulent vitamins on the market, such as chlorophyll and “B17”. Chlorophyll is the chemical that makes plants green. “B17”, a.k.a. laetrile, is a good-for-nothing almond seed extract popular as a fake cancer cure. Vitamin companies know that a person will reach for what they think they need, regardless of whether the product will actually improve their health.
The key is always in the marketing. If your doctor directs you to take vitamin D, you will experience a better supportive placebo (in combination with the alleviation of your deficiency) from taking pills from a bottle marked “VITAMIN D” in big letters. A multivitamin which contains vitamin D but doesn’t make it as prominent won’t have a positive psychological effect as strong.
I’d surmise that the multivitamin and individual vitamin bottles are sold at the same price because marketers don’t want to create a disincentive from reaching for the label that will best satisfy individual psychological “need”. By removing the price consideration, markets reduce the amount of resistance on a person’s path to buying one of their products, increasing the likelihood that they’ll buy something rather than shrug, walk away and lose interest.
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Vitamins are cheap. It is the manufacturing equipment, certifications, shipping and retail mark up that is expensive.
Because people are paying it and expecting to pay for it(at this point). You are not paying the fair price anyway. People have done the marketing research and know what they can ask for their product. And you are paying the price that generates the most profit, in theory. Apparently your brand has figured out that keeping the prices flat over the range of their products is the best way to do this.
Holland & Barett (the first hit google gave me) apparently does not agree though, because their pill prices go all over the place.
If you’re actually deficient in some vitamin, then the multivitamin may not be enough. If you need 1000ui extra vitamin d a day, and the multivitamin only has 200ui in it, you’d need to take five of them.
The price of the actual vitamins isn’t the most expensive manufacturing cost. Actually making the pills, packaging them, the labeling and distributing the bottles are the largest costs. Once that’s factored in, the overhead are not much different between the products. The price you see in the stores are based on customer demand, and what the market will bear. Advertising works hard to maximize the overall profits by steering sets of people into different products at the most profitable price point.
Helps to understand the different forms of vitamins, most multivitamins aren’t absorbed as well as say, just taking a highly absorbable Vitamin D capsule. You’ll generally get more from the individual stuff. You’ll see things like 500% of your daily recommended on things like multis because they know you will only absorb a fraction of it.
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