The Price Isn’t Right These Days

The price has been wrong a lot more lately.

According to Quartz, a new study has analyzed over 120,000 bids on “The Price Is Right” and found that contestants have gotten progressively worse at correctly guessing the price of items over the course of the game show’s 47 years.

For those unfamiliar, this is how the game works!….

During the “Contestants Row” portion of the game show, four contestants try to guess the correct price of household items like cans of soup, cleaning products and electrical appliances. The one who gets closest to the actual price without going over moves on to the next round.

In the 1970s, the average guess was about 8% below the actual price, but in the last ten years contestants have been underestimating the price by more than 20%, according to the data obtained by Harvard University analyst Jonathan Hartley.

There are three reasons as to why this may be happening according to data collectors:

 

First, back in the 70’s & 80’s people were more aware of how much things costs, compared to now.

Secondly, the rise of e-commerce sites like Amazon.com may have made people be less sensitive to price. Competitive sites have led to the cost of items being more uniform, so consumers feel less motivated to compare prices.

Lastly, there are more products available to consumers than ever. Today grocery stores have 50 times the amount of items on shelves than they did in the past, making it harder for someone to know what a particular product actually costs.