Ask someone what a litre of gasoline costs and there is a reasonable chance they will know.

Milk?

Probably close.

A cup of coffee?

Certainly close enough to complain about it.

Now ask the same person what a three-gallon clematis should cost.

Or a mature peony.

Or a seven-gallon hydrangea.

Or a dwarf cherry tree.

Something interesting happens.

The confidence disappears.

The customer may know whether the price feels high or low.

But compared with what?

There is no horticultural ticker running across the bottom of the television announcing today’s average retail price of a flowering shrub.

Most consumers do not check the price of peonies every week.

They do not receive monthly clematis statements.

They may purchase a fruit tree once every several years.

This creates one of the more unusual characteristics of horticultural retail.

The consumer often encounters the price before they possess a strong idea of what the price ought to be.

So they begin looking for clues.

The size of the plant.

The size of the container.

The maturity.

The variety.

The label.

The brand.

The story surrounding it.

And perhaps most importantly:

the prices sitting beside it.

Price is not simply the amount a customer pays.

Price is also information.

Nobody Knows What $39.99 Means by Itself

Imagine a garden centre displaying three flowering shrubs.

$24.99

$39.99

$69.99

Suddenly $39.99 is more than a number.

It is the middle.

Now take the identical $39.99 shrub and place it beside:

$14.99

$19.99

$24.99

Nothing about the $39.99 plant has changed.

Same genetics.

Same container.

Same size.

Same price.

But psychologically, it has moved.

In the first display, $39.99 may feel moderate.

In the second, it is the expensive one.

This is the world of reference pricing.

Consumers rarely evaluate prices in complete isolation. Research has shown that reference prices can be created partly from past prices stored in memory and partly from prices encountered in the immediate shopping environment. Rajendran and Tellis found evidence that contextual prices within the store contribute to the reference point consumers use when evaluating an offer.

That means a neighbouring price is doing more than describing another product.

It is helping define this one.

Horticulture Has a Reference-Price Problem

Consider how frequently people purchase grocery staples.

Milk.

Eggs.

Bread.

Coffee.

Consumers encounter those prices repeatedly.

Their internal reference becomes reasonably well calibrated.

Plants are different.

Someone might buy a perennial several times a year.

Another shopper might buy one every three years.

A flowering tree may be purchased once in a decade.

A premium climbing rose may be the customer’s first.

An unusual new fruit variety may have no meaningful comparison in memory at all.

The consumer therefore arrives with a weaker internal price map.

That makes the retail environment unusually influential.

What else is available?

What size is it?

What is the least expensive option?

What is the premium one?

What does spending another $15 appear to buy?

Those questions help the shopper build a price scale in real time.

The garden centre is not simply displaying prices.

It is teaching the customer what the category costs.

The First Number Has Gravity

Behavioural scientists have long studied anchoring.

In the classic work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, an initial numerical value influenced subsequent estimates even when the original number had little legitimate bearing on the answer.

The important retail lesson is not that shoppers are robots hypnotized by the first price they see.

They are not.

It is that numbers create context.

A shopper who first encounters a spectacular $89.99 specimen rose has entered the rose category through one doorway.

A shopper who first encounters a $19.99 rose has entered through another.

When they later see a strong $44.99 option, the number is being interpreted against a different background.

That first price has gravity.

It alters the landscape around it.

This becomes particularly important when the consumer has no well-established internal benchmark of their own.

Price Can Become a Quality Cue

There is another complication.

Consumers sometimes use price itself as evidence about quality.

That sounds circular.

Surely price should reflect quality.

Instead, consumers can occasionally reason in the opposite direction:

It costs more, therefore there must be something better about it.

A major research review by Akshay Rao and Kent Monroe examined experiments involving price, brand and store information. Across consumer products, they found a statistically significant positive relationship between price and perceived quality.

The key word is perceived.

A higher price does not magically improve genetics.

It does not add hardiness.

It does not make a plant flower longer.

But when buyers lack complete information, price becomes one of the available signals.

Consider an unfamiliar rose at $59.99 beside another at $34.99.

A customer might reasonably wonder:

Is it newer?

Is it larger?

Is it harder to produce?

Does it flower more?

Is it more disease resistant?

Is it a premium variety?

The price has created a question.

Now the merchandise has to answer it.

Higher Price Creates a Burden of Explanation

This is where premiumization can succeed or fail.

Suppose two peonies are displayed beside one another.

One is $29.99.

The other is $44.99.

The grower knows precisely why.

Perhaps the more expensive plant required additional production time.

Perhaps it has a larger crown.

Perhaps it is an exceptional new introduction.

Perhaps it produces a distinctive flower.

Perhaps it has considerably greater immediate garden impact.

The consumer may see:

Two peonies.

That creates a dangerous gap.

The price difference is obvious.

The value difference is not.

Whenever that happens, the cheaper product has a powerful argument:

Why pay more?

The premium product therefore needs evidence.

Not a botanical lecture.

Evidence.

What does the extra money buy?

More maturity.

More flowers.

A substantially larger specimen.

An unusual colour.

Earlier fruiting.

Exceptional hardiness.

A compact habit particularly suited to smaller gardens.

Immediate landscape impact.

A genuinely distinctive introduction.

Premiumization is partly the art of making the difference worth paying for understandable.

The Customer Does Not Care About Our Cost

This is a difficult principle for producers.

A plant may legitimately cost more because it took longer to grow.

It required additional labour.

The royalty was higher.

The liner cost more.

The production risk was greater.

The container was more expensive.

Freight increased.

All of those factors matter to the seller.

They determine whether the product can profitably be produced.

But none of them automatically creates value for the consumer.

A customer does not walk into a garden centre thinking:

I hope I can find a plant with unusually high production costs.

They care about what those costs created.

That difference is fundamental.

Cost explains the price to the business.

Value explains the price to the customer.

The two need to meet.

Three Hydrangeas Walk Into a Garden Centre

Consider this assortment.

Hydrangea A
Young plant
Smaller container
$19.99

Hydrangea B
Larger, established plant
More immediate garden presence
$34.99

Hydrangea C
Mature specimen
Substantial structure
Immediate landscape impact
$54.99

There is something reassuring about this.

The prices tell a story.

Spend more.

Get more.

Not simply more plastic around the roots.

More outcome.

Now consider:

$19.99

$33.99

$52.99

All three plants appear almost identical.

That is no longer a price ladder.

It is a puzzle.

And consumers are not particularly fond of paying extra for benefits they cannot identify.

The Middle Has a Strange Advantage

There is a fascinating effect in consumer psychology known as the compromise effect.

Itamar Simonson demonstrated that an option can become more attractive simply because it occupies a middle position within a choice set.

Consumers often prefer alternatives they can justify.

The cheapest option can feel like sacrificing too much.

The most expensive can feel indulgent.

The middle becomes defensible.

Not cheap.

Not excessive.

Sensible.

Research has repeatedly found versions of this extremeness aversion across categories.

This has obvious applications in horticulture.

Small.

Medium.

Large.

Young.

Established.

Specimen.

The power of a three-level structure is not merely that there are three budgets.

Each option gives meaning to the other two.

The entry level says:

Here is the economical way in.

The premium option says:

Here is how far this category can go.

And the middle says:

Here is a substantial upgrade without going all the way.

That can be an extraordinarily comfortable place for a consumer to stand.

Good-Better-Best Is Not a Trick

There is a temptation to interpret behavioural pricing as manipulation.

Add an expensive option so the middle suddenly looks cheaper.

Anchor shoppers with a high price.

Push them toward the product the retailer wants to sell.

That is a shallow use of the science.

Good price architecture should make a category easier to understand.

The objective is not to fool the customer.

It is to create coherent trade-offs.

Good.

Better.

Best.

Each needs a legitimate reason to exist.

If the premium product is merely expensive, the architecture collapses.

If the entry product is deliberately poor, trust suffers.

If the middle is engineered solely to herd customers toward a predetermined choice, retailing becomes theatre.

The strongest price ladders are honest.

They allow the customer to see what changes as investment rises.

The Premium Product Can Earn Its Keep Without Winning

This leads to one of the stranger economics of assortment.

The highest-priced plant does not necessarily have to be the bestseller to justify its existence.

Suppose a garden centre sells:

$24.99 rose

$44.99 rose

$69.99 specimen rose

The $69.99 plant may sell fewer units.

But it performs other work.

It establishes the top of the category.

It makes the $44.99 plant easier to contextualize.

It demonstrates what a more mature product looks like.

It creates an aspirational option for customers seeking immediate impact.

It signals that roses can occupy more than one value level.

In other words, SKU productivity is not always captured perfectly by unit velocity.

Some products help define the value architecture around other products.

That should not become an excuse for carrying expensive inventory nobody buys.

But it is a reminder that assortment economics can contain indirect effects.

Cheap Can Become Expensive

Now reverse the problem.

Suppose the $44.99 rose is excellent.

Beside it sits a $24.99 rose that looks remarkably similar.

The customer asks:

Why would I pay twenty dollars more?

There may be a very good answer.

But if the retailer does not provide one, the customer will.

Probably:

I wouldn’t.

The retailer has unintentionally created their own competitor.

This happens when price architecture and product architecture become disconnected.

Different price points need understandable roles.

The lower-priced product might offer:

a lower-cost starting point.

The premium version might offer:

immediate garden impact.

Those are different propositions.

But if both propositions look identical from the customer’s side of the bench, the less expensive number does most of the talking.

Price Gaps Need Meaning

Retailers sometimes spend considerable energy determining the correct absolute price and much less considering the distance between prices.

Yet customers see those distances.

Why is this plant $5 more?

Why is that one $18 more?

Why is another twice the price?

A useful pricing ladder should produce increments customers can understand.

That does not mean every $10 increase requires exactly $10 of visibly measurable botanical improvement.

Consumer value does not work that mechanically.

But the hierarchy should feel coherent.

If the customer moves upward in price, they should encounter a credible upward movement in benefit.

Otherwise the ladder develops missing steps.

And when shoppers cannot understand the step, they frequently retreat to the number they can justify.

Price Is Part of Positioning

Consider two signs:

Clematis
$49.99

and:

Premium Established Clematis
Extra-mature plant for immediate garden impact
$49.99

The price has not changed.

The surrounding meaning has.

This does not mean adding adjectives can make any price reasonable.

Consumers are not fools.

But price is interpreted within positioning.

A premium number attached to a clearly differentiated proposition is coherent.

A premium number attached to an unexplained product is merely expensive.

That distinction should matter enormously when horticultural businesses introduce higher-value genetics.

Breeders can create innovation.

Growers can produce it.

Retail still has to translate the innovation into a reason someone should spend more.

Discounts Do Something After the Sale Is Over

One of the most important lessons in pricing research is that promotions do not disappear when the promotion ends.

They can remain in the consumer’s expectations.

Manohar Kalwani and Chi Kin Yim experimentally examined how promotion frequency and discount depth influence expected prices.

Both mattered.

Consumers learned from the promotion history.

James Lattin and Randolph Bucklin similarly found that prior pricing and promotional activity can create reference effects influencing subsequent brand choice.

This means every promotion teaches.

Imagine a perennial normally priced at $39.99.

Several times each season:

$29.99.

Then:

$27.99.

Again:

$29.99.

Eventually, what is the real price?

The retailer may say:

$39.99.

The customer may say:

Not if I wait.

The sale price has stopped being an exception.

It has become information.

The Most Dangerous Promotion Is the Predictable One

Discounting works partly because it creates contrast.

Was $39.99.

Now $29.99.

The difference creates value.

But repeated promotions can erode the very reference point that gives the promotion its power.

If customers come to expect $29.99, the original $39.99 no longer performs as the credible benchmark.

It starts to look like the price paid by impatient people.

This creates a peculiar cycle.

Promotion generates traffic.

Customers learn to expect promotion.

Full-price demand weakens.

More promotion is needed to generate traffic.

The retailer concludes that consumers are increasingly price sensitive.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps the retailer taught them to be.

Not Every Category Should Be Promoted the Same Way

Plants present an additional complication because purchase frequency varies enormously.

Repeated promotions on a frequently purchased product can rapidly establish expectations.

A consumer may encounter the same annual program several times in one season.

A flowering tree might be purchased once.

That means reference-price formation will differ across horticultural categories.

The promotional strategy for commodity annuals need not resemble the strategy for specimen shrubs.

The more infrequently purchased and differentiated the product, the less likely the consumer may be to possess a highly developed internal price reference.

That can make surrounding context, presentation and comparison especially important.

This is why broad, indiscriminate discount strategies can be commercially lazy.

Different categories play different psychological roles.

Regular Price Is Also a Message

A particularly interesting 2025 study investigated live-plant displays using eye-tracking technology.

Researchers varied both the number of plants displayed and whether the price was regular or discounted.

The results showed that pricing changed the relationship between display complexity, visual attention to signage and likelihood to buy.

At regular prices, purchase intention increased as display size increased in the experimental conditions. At discounted prices, that relationship disappeared. Attention to the price sign also behaved differently depending on whether the offer was regular or discounted.

This is useful because it reminds us that price does not sit separately from merchandising.

The number changes how other retail signals are interpreted.

A sale sign creates one shopping frame.

A regular price creates another.

That interaction deserves more attention in horticulture.

Price Should Not Be the Emergency Exit

When something is not selling, retailers naturally reach for the easiest variable to change.

Price.

It can be changed this afternoon.

Other problems are harder.

Wrong size.

Weak positioning.

Poor product differentiation.

Incorrect market.

Unclear value proposition.

Inappropriate price ladder.

Insufficient explanation of the premium.

Price becomes the emergency exit.

Sometimes it should.

There are moments when a product simply costs more than consumers are willing to pay.

But lowering the price before understanding the problem can destroy useful information.

Suppose a $49.99 perennial does not sell.

Is $49.99 wrong?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps the shopper cannot see what distinguishes it from the $29.99 perennial beside it.

Those are very different diagnoses.

One calls for a price change.

The other calls for a value explanation.

Discounting cannot tell us which problem we had.

It can merely make the symptom disappear.

A Price Ladder Should Tell a Story

Walk through any horticultural category and ignore the plants for a moment.

Look only at the prices.

Do they make sense?

Can you see an entry point?

A mainstream position?

A premium position?

Are the differences random?

Are there several products clustered within a few dollars of one another with no obvious reason?

Does one product suddenly jump by $20?

Can you understand why?

Now put the plants back into the picture.

Does the physical progression support the numerical progression?

If it does, the pricing architecture begins helping the customer.

If it does not, the prices become obstacles requiring explanation.

The best pricing structures can almost be read without words.

Spend this.

Get this.

Spend more.

Get more.

Spend substantially more.

Get something meaningfully different.

The Price Tag Should Answer “Compared With What?”

Every customer evaluating a price is performing some version of a comparison.

Compared with the plant beside it.

Compared with what I bought last year.

Compared with the cheaper size.

Compared with the larger one.

Compared with the garden impact I expect.

Compared with the amount I planned to spend today.

Compared with what this category seems to cost.

Research on reference prices has repeatedly shown that consumer judgments reflect both historical and contextual comparison points rather than one fixed internal number.

Retailers therefore have a choice.

We can allow those comparisons to happen accidentally.

Or we can build coherent comparison environments.

That is not manipulation.

It is merchandising.

Seven Questions Worth Asking

Before finalizing a horticultural pricing program, consider:

• What internal reference price is the customer likely to bring into this category?
• What external reference prices are we creating around the product?
• Can customers understand why one option costs more than another?
• Does each price step correspond to a meaningful change in value?
• Is the premium product visibly and credibly premium?
• Are promotions teaching customers to wait?
• If I knew almost nothing about this plant category, would the pricing architecture still make sense?

That last question deserves particular attention.

Horticultural professionals carry years of invisible knowledge into the garden centre.

The consumer does not.

Pricing should work from their side of the bench.

The Number Is Never Alone

We tend to imagine price as the final step in commercial horticulture.

Grow the plant.

Ship it.

Display it.

Then attach the number.

Behavioural economics suggests something quite different.

The number changes how the product is interpreted.

The neighbouring number changes it again.

The premium option helps define the middle.

The entry option defines the bottom.

Repeated promotions alter expectations.

The price itself can influence perceptions of quality.

And all of these relationships become more powerful when shoppers begin without a confident idea of what the product ought to cost.

That makes pricing part of merchandising.

Part of positioning.

Part of marketing.

And part of the product story itself.

The customer’s real question was never simply:

What does this plant cost?

The question is:

Compared with what I am getting, does this feel worth it?

The strongest horticultural retailers make that answer easier to see.

Not by making every plant cheaper.

By making every price make sense.

Sources

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, 1974.

Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects
Itamar Simonson, 1989.

The Effect of Price, Brand Name, and Store Name on Buyers’ Perceptions of Product Quality: An Integrative Review
Akshay R. Rao and Kent B. Monroe, 1989.

Reference Effects of Price and Promotion on Brand Choice Behavior
James M. Lattin and Randolph E. Bucklin, 1989.

Consumer Price and Promotion Expectations: An Experimental Study
Manohar U. Kalwani and Chi Kin Yim, 1992.

Contextual and Temporal Components of Reference Price
K. N. Rajendran and Gerard J. Tellis, 1994.

Reference Price Research: Review and Propositions
Tridib Mazumdar, S. P. Raj and Indrajit Sinha, 2005.

The Role of Price in Display Complexity’s Impact on Horticultural Plant Purchase Intention: An Eye-Tracking Study
Horticultural retail researchers, 2025.

Extremeness Aversion and Choice Set Composition: Exposure to Multiple Extreme Options Reduces Extremeness Aversion
Journal of Consumer Research researchers, 2026.