I bought fast food for a group of people last night. The menu pricing was significantly higher than ordering through the app, which also allowed me to attach a digital coupon.
The pricing within the app is what I would expect to pay, or what I believe is “fair” or “reasonable” for chicken nuggets, French fries, and cheeseburgers.
On the other hand, I have cut my fast food consumption by at least half over the last few years because the published menu prices have skyrocketed.
What possible benefit would a fast food restaurant derive from publishing high prices to the casual customer and drastically reducing them within the app?
They have to be realizing a net loss of customers with this model, right?
In: Economics
>They have to be realizing a net loss of customers with this model, right?
If they were, they wouldn’t be doing it. These are multi-billion dollar companies, not a bunch of monkeys just randomly coming up with ideas.
They want you to use the app. The app gives them valuable data on consumer behavior, and it also gives them an avenue for extremely strategic and targeted advertising via the app’s notifications.
They might lose some customers that choose not to use the app, but it’s probably not all that significant. The reality is, people are always going to want fast food. If someone is on lunch break at work and they didn’t pack something and don’t have an employee cafeteria, they’re probably going to get fast food. If someone is traveling and needs to eat something fast, cheap, or just familiar, they’re probably getting fast food. And then there’s all of the people that are just plain addicted to fast food and are too lazy to cook.
Even if they don’t use the app, they’re going to pay the inflated prices because they pretty much have to.
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