Retail / Sales & Marketing

Remove the Currency Symbol on Your Salon Menu & Get Clients Spending More

2 min

Remove the Currency Symbol on Your Salon Menu & Get Clients Spending More

Sometimes, the smallest detail makes the biggest difference when it comes to growing a salon.  I recently came across this blog post about a restaurant in the USA and a study that was conducted with its clients.

The study was simple. They gave out two menus over a period of time, one with a dollar sign before the prices and one with no dollar sign and just the numbers.

Guess who spent more and why…

 

The Problem with a Currency Symbol

The reason people buy more when there is no currency symbol is that the euro, pound or dollar sign triggers a defense mechanism in our brain according to researchers involved with the study i.e. a currency sign is a symbol of cost, not gain.

Currency symbols make us automatically switch into a defense mode to protect our money and therefore buy the cheaper dish, or in the case of a salon, buy the cheaper alternative to a treatment or style. Some clients may even decide to hit the supermarket for D.I.Y products instead.

We recommend removing the currency symbol on your salon menu, website price list etc and seeing how you fare. It makes total sense for a salon as your clients will, without any hesitation, assume that you are trading in the local currency.

 

Creating Relative Value

The study also revealed that putting one item on your list of services or products with a significantly higher cost than the rest can increase uptake of other products i.e. when you put one more expensive flagship service on your salon menu it makes everything else seem relatively good value in comparison. This item is called the ‘anchor’.

You should place a still very profitable service/s close to it (above or below) as your second tier pricing and then a third service/s that is the cheapest of the three, but still has a good margin.

 

Conclusion

Removing the currency symbol and placing/designing your salon menu (online or printed) of your most profitable services near an anchor means greater uptake because there are less barriers to going for the more expensive option.

You do need to exercise common sense with this approach of course. If a full head of real extensions costs £500 in your salon, then placing a blow dry below it for £350 on your salon menu is still ludicrous and won’t fly with any savvy client.

Oh and if you are interested in maximising your Salon’s true potential this year, why not request a demo of our salon software today? Simply fill out the demo form below!

 

Connor Keppel is the marketing manager here in Phorest Salon Software. If you have a question for Connor, drop an email to marketing@phorest.com. 

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