> I notice it most when things here by chance are done in metric, but the units still aren't converted. E.g. I might see something listed at 1000mL, instead of just writing 1L. Or 3500g instead of 3.5kg.
I see things like this constantly in shops in Europe. I think it is part of a dark pattern to make price comparisons less intuitive and even misleading if you just skip over the prices trying to find the cheapest. What is cheaper, the product advertised as $X per liter or the one priced $Y per 100ml? There usually isn't a significant difference in packaging volume or usage that would otherwise explain why anyone would use different units for each.
> I see things like this constantly in shops in Europe. I think it is part of a dark pattern to make price comparisons less intuitive
In Germany they put the price of a unit on the price tag. So that you can clearly see that 0.33 bottle of Coke is more expensive (per liter) than the 1l.
Germany is a big user of the trick "lemme change the unit from €/kg to €/100g in this part of the shop", for example at the cheese counter, which is what the parent is saying. It was the same trick used in the UK.
I believe it comes from a european rules which allows such labeling if the packaging is small.
In France it is always labelled in €/kg or €/L consistently through the shop.
> > I notice it most when things here by chance are done in metric, but the units still aren't converted. E.g. I might see something listed at 1000mL, instead of just writing 1L. Or 3500g instead of 3.5kg.
> I see things like this constantly in shops in Europe. I think it is part of a dark pattern to make price comparisons less intuitive and even misleading if you just skip over the prices trying to find the cheapest.
It doesn't really matter though, as conversion is so easy and automatic.
Meanwhile in the US, if I want to determine which product has more fat, my butter lists nutrition per tea spoon, my milk by the cup, my yogurt by 3/4 of a cup, another butter per 100g, yet other products per 24 ounces.
Honestly I don't know if anybody is able to extract useful information from those comparisons, without pulling out a calculator in the super market.
At least in Germany shops play rather loosely with the units. Yes, you have €/kg but you also have €/100g, €/g, ... and they will switch between them even for near identical products. Can't cheat buyers out of money by selling them a 30% larger bottle if you make it too obvious that they are paying 40% more for it.
I’m puzzled by this. How hard is it to convert prices by powers of 10? Do the same thing with $/lb and $/oz, and I’d be lost.
Edit: Oh wait, I get it. It’s just that a price per 100 g is an order if magnitude less than per kg, so psychology kicks in and makes it look cheaper, even though the conversion is trivial. A bit like the 9.99 effect.
But this could just be part of the pattern of Europeans being more lose with unit changing, because it's so easy to do anyway.
People just tend to use the units that keep the values in a reasonable range of 1-10.
I see things like this constantly in shops in Europe. I think it is part of a dark pattern to make price comparisons less intuitive and even misleading if you just skip over the prices trying to find the cheapest. What is cheaper, the product advertised as $X per liter or the one priced $Y per 100ml? There usually isn't a significant difference in packaging volume or usage that would otherwise explain why anyone would use different units for each.