Walking into a store and seeing a “50% Off” sign triggers a rush of excitement, a dopamine hit that retailers have spent decades engineering. We instinctively believe that a slashed price represents a victory, a steal that we must claim immediately. However, a growing wave of consumer lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny suggests that many of these discounts are elaborate illusions. The practice, known as “fictitious pricing” or “false reference pricing,” involves retailers artificially inflating the “original” price of an item just days before a sale, creating a phantom discount that looks deeper than it actually is.
