The blogger at Durango Texas noticed a two-cent difference between the post price of milk ($1.98/gallon) and the price at the check-out ($2/gallon). Two cents isn’t enough to make you hassle with customer service, but how much is it worth to Walmart?

I suspect Wal-Mart employs psychologists, just like Microsoft does, to try and figure out how much pain they can inflict before their customers react. The research probably showed something like only 1 in 3,459 customers was even going to notice the mistake and that only 1 in 55,493 of those who do notice would take the time to wait in the Customer Service line to complain. The research probably also showed that something like 1 in 433,356 of those who notice the mistake will blog about it and at that time they’d have to label the blogger a crackpot.

And if that is only 433,356 gallons of milk it adds up to $8,667.12 in how long, an hour?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 0833 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Customer Satisfaction, Groceries, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.