Gabor-Granger: Price Without a Shelf Isn’t Price — It’s a Daydream

Gabor Granger asks: Would you pay $10? $9? $8?
But it forgets to ask the only question that matters:

What else could they buy instead?

There’s no shelf. No other options. No competition.

Just a lonely price tag floating in a vacuum.

Why This Fails:

• No one buys price alone. They buy products, and they compare.
• Gabor Granger pretends the product is already wanted — and price is the only barrier.
• Real pricing strategy lives in a battlefield of alternatives, not an empty room.

What It Misses:

• Substitutes: What else is fighting for that same dollar?
• Context: Price is interpreted in context. Without it, all bets are off.
• Behavior: Consumers don’t stand still while you probe — they move, browse, trade off.

Bottom line: A price without a shelf is just a guess. It tells you what people might say — not what they’d actually do.

Gabor Granger and the Bargaining Table That Doesn’t Exist

Let’s be honest — no store follows you out the door and begs,

“Would you buy it for $2 less? How about now?”

But that’s the core fantasy of Gabor Granger.

It assumes people are standing still, waiting to be negotiated with — one price point at a time. That’s not how shelves work. That’s not how people shop.