Why You Should Pay Attention To Costco Price Tags That End In .97

For a company that has as much popularity and acclaim as Costco, there are certainly some enigmas present in the consumer's everyday shopping experience there. From figuring out the companies behind the production of Kirkland brand products such as bacon and even Kirkland craft beer, to uncovering hidden gems such as Costco's top-quality olive oil, the store is full of little secrets in its branding. And as it turns out, this is also true when it comes to its pricing.

If you've spent much time paying attention to the prices of different items at Costco, chances are you've noticed that only some items have prices that end at the 97-cent mark. Why is this? Well, the answer is quite simple – it means that the item is on clearance. You see, Costco has a whole system devised to assign certain prices to items depending on their status. In the case of clearance items, Costco will either assign a .00 or a .97 ending to their price tag, depending on what the item is. Usually, .00 is saved for clothing items, while .97 can be found pretty much anywhere else. Either way, if you see this number, savings are in store.

This is a question with no clear or even consistent answer. Unlike pretty much every other retailer out there, Costco doesn't make a show of how much a particular clearance product has been marked down. Instead of striking a big slash through the original price and advertising the new sale price underneath, Costco simply opts for its 97-cent price tag ending.

It seems that Costco tends to mark items with .97 if the store needs to clear out inventory — whether that may be due to an overstocked item or one that the store may have simply been sitting on for too long. The unfortunate part of this method is that, unless you've been paying heavy scrutiny to prices during your Costco visits, there's no way to find out how much you're actually saving on an item that ends in .97 outside of copying the product number and tracking down an employee who can research the product's price history for you. Sometimes, you may only be saving a small amount, but don't fret just yet. If you check out the bottom-right of Costco's price tags, you'll see a date signifying the last time the price was updated. If there's still a lot of stock and the price hasn't been updated for a few weeks, forgo the item for now and come back later. Chances are the price will be reduced even more.

The .97 price tag is only one part of Costco's unique pricing system that you ought to know. One thing that's super pertinent to your buying decision is availability, and if the clearance item has an asterisk on its tag, you really should consider just buying the item there and then. An asterisk indicates that the product is not being restocked, so if there's a product with both a .97 and an asterisk on its tag, it's probably best to just get the item instead of gambling on a price reduction and potentially missing out on the product entirely.

These tips only scratch the surface of Costco's methods of pricing its stock. For example, .97, .79, .88, and .99 all indicate different pricing conditions. Between the asterisks and their various price endings, there can be a lot to unpack (and potentially a lot of money to save) by understanding the way Costco marks its products. And even though Costco doesn't shy away from making changes, you can still count on getting a deal for yourself by keeping an eye out for the magic number .97 on your price tags.