Came across this article regarding listed prices on Amazon and other retailers. TL;DR RRP has no relationship to value and therefore whether a transaction is a bargain.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/technology/its-discounted-…
What the article does not go into is that that the most important part of the RRP is simply the number itself. Indeed if the number was just displayed on the screen with no label at all next to it it would still achieve it's purpose.
The number causes your brain to undergo an automatic process whereby just by having seen the number your (very, very malleable) sense of value (that you percieve wrongly as fixed and rationally calculated) is changed so that the actual price seems like better value than it otherwise would have.
It's important to understand there is no magical person that is impervious to the anchoring effect (as it is more generally known) however it will work to varying degrees on everyone. Having better reference points is what saves you from this manipulation so in the case of retailer manipulation if you are better informed of pricing over time then you are less likely to undergo the effect - but you can never know since the process is automatic.
It will happen to more people than it will not but since you have no way of knowing if you have been effected it is surely better to assume that you have been.
Thanks for sharing, I totally agree with you. Especially when retailers jack up prices before heavy "discounts" or sales.