The roots of price stickiness, part II

Book rage, anyone? As the Canadian dollar hit the $1.10 mark earlier
this week, booksellers and publishers began to circulate stories of
customers going beyond simply venting their dismay at hapless clerks
and turning books into projectiles, sometimes to the point of drawing
blood.

If you live in Bangalore or Singapore, you may not know that the cover of a North American book typically has a price posted in U.S. dollars and a higher price posted in Canadian dollars.  The Canadian dollar used to be worth much less yet now it is worth more and so Canadian consumers feel ripped off.  Could we minimize this problem by also posting the price of the book in Switzerland or New Zealand, two countries with notoriously high book prices?  Or do Canadians care most about their price treatment relative to Americans, or simply their price treatment relative to the greatest comparative outrage elsewhere, rather than their relative treatment compared to the world as a whole?

Here is the link and story.  Along related lines, I found Sarah Maxwell’s The Price is Wrong:  Understanding What Makes a Price Seem Fair and the True Cost of Unfair Pricing to be a stimulating collection of anecdotes on this issue.  Here is my previous post on the iPhone and price resentment.