When shopping, you compare prices for different sizes and quantities of the same item and weigh that against your needs to determine which is the best deal. Except at Target. At Target, customers have to deal with a special kind of math, where putting an item on sale means that the price goes up, and where buying things in larger quantities means that you pay a higher unit price. It’s a special place where the bargains are plentiful, but make no sense.

Let’s take these eggs, for example. Piotr noticed that eggs were on sale, but the price was a little high. If this shelf tag is accurate, the store raised the price by $1.19 to put them on sale. We tried to make sense of this and could not. The discount claims that the original price was $4.29, which isn’t double the original price of the eggs. That would almost have made sense.

Jenn sent us this example of “Target math,” but there’s something wrong. See if you can tell what it is.

Yes, it would cost you more to buy a smaller quantity of cat food in two bags than a larger quantity in one bag, and the price becomes cheaper still if you buy two of the larger bags and receive a gift card back. However, both items are on sale, and this is an example of pricing done correctly in a Target store.  The cat food gets cheaper per ounce if you buy more. That is how it is supposed to work.

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