Why small and local businesses should stay away from practices that take the joy away from online shopping

For all you privacy nerds out there, this is a disappointing statement, but I LOVE targeted ads. I always ensure that I’m signed in to all my accounts and all my cookies are synced to give me the best-targeted ads experience I can get on the interwebz. My purpose of existence on Instagram is to discover local brands through targeted ads. I follow one local brand selling some cool shit and I get ads from 20 other similar accounts and I follow them all. You get the gist; I am a crazy Internet shopper.

I come across lots of cool, handicraft products on sale and I immediately want to know if I can afford to buy it. However, a trend that seems to persist between a lot of small, local businesses is a lack of transparency when it comes to pricing. The Instagram post with the product will have a beautiful picture, even a nice description but never the price. You’d find a slurry of two-letter comments like ‘Pp’ and a response from the brand to those comments that essentially say ‘DM for price’. DM means direct message and typically, the brand wants you to either message them asking for a price or they will message you with the price and order information.

I know we’re all about owning our audience, creator-led monetization, and vocal for local, but why is shopping on Instagram akin to waiting outside the door for a ClubHouse invite? What is so cool about price secrecy? I find it extremely frustrating to DM for a price because one, I shouldn’t have to; two, I might want to know prices for a lot of products, and do I need to keep asking you?; three, I also like to shop from a lot of brands — do I need to maintain a DM catalog of products that I like?

The Internet reduces distribution costs and establishes transparency. Why are there efforts made to remove this simple layer of transparency? Do these businesses not realize the cost of lost sales/prospects because of an artificially created barrier? I tried to reason for this practice from their perspective and below were some of the thought processes I could imagine them having:

1. Preventing undercutting from competition

2. Preventing other competitors to know your price

3. Establishing a personal connection with engaged shoppers

4. Blackbox Instagram algorithm giving more preference to engaged accounts

I decided to test these ideas with a few brands on Instagram. I DMed (haha, yes I know) and asked them why did they choose to not mention the price on their product posts. Some of the common reasons given were:

1. Selling to both domestic and foreign clients and price differs (Why?!? You can mention shipping separately but if you charge differently, there is an arbitrage gap?!?)

2. Establish a close connection with customers

3. Want to see how many of our followers are engaged (Shopper’s test?)

4. Want to avoid clutter (Price is clutter? In a product post?)

5. Marketing strategy of exclusivity

I honestly don’t understand this line of thinking and why these businesses would choose to forego potential sales for some label of exclusivity. The Internet enables transparency, real-time information, convenience — this is why online shopping is awesome. The practice of withholding prices takes away all three and make the whole experience sour. I understand that a lot of businesses do not have the resources initially to build a website but sharing the price on a post is extremely easy and gives you access to more customers. Withholding price instead takes the focus away from the uniqueness of the product and lends itself to further scrutiny on price, reviews, etc.