I know shitpost and all that but this isn’t actually true, as in it can’t be verified. It was one small mention in a book (Threshold Resistance) by A&W owner Mr. Taubman. He basically said he wanted to know why his same priced 1/3 burgers weren’t outselling competing 1/4 pounders…from a competitor…that I’m sure you can guess. So, he hired a marketing firm who put together a little focus group in the 80s. Some of those focus group members supposedly didn’t know that 1/3 lb. is bigger than 1/4 lb. burgers.
Keep in mind that there’s no evidence or any firm mentioned and the bias surrounding the author that is writing a book about his experiences including a failed venture.
All we know is it is one man’s anecdote and it has been used for 39 years so far to make fun of Americans for supposedly not understanding fractions.
I work in a customer facing position in the US where factions of an inch are used for measurements frequently in the design of a product. I deal with people who don’t know 5/8 is smaller than 3/4 or that 3/8 is smaller than 1/2 on literally a daily basis.
People are dumb and I absolutely believe the burger anecdote.
I work with people who can’t count on a daily basis - This doesn’t mean that nobody can count, it just means that I get calls/emails where someone made a mistake and they need help correcting it. I get to see all of these instances occurring which creates a focus on it and in turn, a bias - if I only get calls/emails of people not being able to count, but no calls/emails about people not being able to spell, then the bias I have is that people suck at counting and are good at spelling.
My point is that there are plenty of people that do understand it, but the people that don’t stand out and create a bias in your perspective.
Imagine getting a call:
“Hey), just calling to tell you everything went fine and I don’t need any help. Bye!”
You know I don’t work with fractions of an inch on a daily basis… Or even monthly. But inevitably a couple times a year it’s relevant. Every single time I have to take 3/4 multiply it by 2 and get 6/8, then I have to subtract 1/8 to get to 5/8. Repeat ad nauseum to get to whatever time fraction is needed.
It’s frustrating and slow and makes me feel dumb.
That said last time I did it, I measured a 1/8th difference between cabinets we ordered from IKEA and the space they went in and I’ll tell you what, I felt like a genius when it all just fit, perfectly.
Reminded of… Verizon Math (Piped)
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Buddy.
JC Penny, some years ago, tried to change their pricing scheme, from the typical “$29.99 +tax” to flat “$30, tax included”
Their sales dropped so hard they reverted in two months.
Americans are born, bred, raised to be fucking stupid, and forcefully shoved into shitty educational systems that make them that stupid. The design of American cities is built for people to be stupid and isolated.
There’s a reason other countries refer to the people that live in them as citizens, and we get branded as consumers.
There’s a level of respect from the top down that is sorely lacking
It is a little more complicated than that. Yes consumers are trained to expect sales. It drives an increase in purchases. However, JC Penny is a sort of mid retailer. It isn’t high-end and it can’t support price competition to the bottom. Much like Kohls that basically lives on having things constantly “on sale” while all they really are doing is pricing below MSRP which is meaningless, especially when it is specifically designed to be underpriced.
They didn’t simply make “$29.99 + tax” into “$30, tax included” but they removed MSRP markings that were higher than their ‘sale’ prices. They removed the “.99” from prices and generally lowered them to under the MSRP always though not necessarily down to their ‘sale’ prices to overall bring prices down everywhere.
It’s “Everyday Pricing” initiative to lower overall pricing couldn’t compete with stores specifically designed to keep prices down and it certainly didn’t have the reputation of being upscale for any merchandise. Therefore, the only way to survive is to make consumers believe everything is on sale, always. Essentially fooling the customer into believing that they are getting a deal on better products for a cheaper price.
If someone wants to buy nice clothes, they will buy nice clothes and pay more for them. Underpricing them could actually hurt sales. If someone wants a ‘deal’ then they are going to go to low price competitors. Mid tier retailers are always going to have a tough problem to solve, unless you fool the consumer.
That marketing gimmick isn’t centralized to just the US or even North America. It works anywhere in the world for a mid retailer.
Perhaps, you believe that this makes the consumers stupid but that would be a universal generalization rather than an US cultural one.
I genuinely had a mortgage advisor point at a > and go “is that more than or less than, I never can remember?”
I ended up not taking his advice on a mortgage, although I did also fix his printer before he left. I did this by clearing 150 jobs from the print queue.
That takes me way back to grade 1 where the way I was taught was to imagine an alligator eating the bigger number. I think all year I even drew teeth on them!
It’s a fucking arrow pointing from big to small. It has a big end that goes at the big number and a small end that goes at the small number.
It couldn’t be simpler.
People still can’t remember.
I mean I get having trouble with Trig… But this ?
Ah yes the marketing major quick fix excuse, “No sir I didn’t do a poor job selling your product! The customers are all just too stupid to buy it!”
I think there’s a legit degree of lyrical quality to “quarter pounder” that doesn’t come off the same as “third pounder” or “half pounder”. Its just more fun to say.
I wonder what a fix on that specifically would look like, double-quarter-pounder? Dirty Poun…that already sounded better in my head and I didn’t even say it out loud lol.
You mean a Royale with cheese?
I suppose they didn’t want to bind it yet again to a unit and go with a name they could use in many countries. 113g burger would’ve probably worked. But increasing it to 125g or 1/8 kg would probably been better.
In Germany McD at first literally translated its quarter pounder as Viertelpfunder, but then switched to Hamburger Royal. They might have realized that that was actually 125g and not the intended 113g. Pound isn’t a context-free or precise unit.
In Germany McD at first literally translated its quarter pounder as Viertelpfunder
Wow, must have been really far back. I remember it was the Royale there in the 80s.
I’m inclined to believe it. I worked for a Wall Street firm when the stock market switched from fractional quotations to decimal. Lots of my coworkers printed out a conversion table from fractions to decimals, and even so often had problems figuring out which of two quotations was greater than the other one (in decimals). Those were smart people, but if you work with one system for so long, your brain gets hardwired and difficult to change.
