Learn English – Differences between “price point” and “price”

differencesmeaning

Apart from its use among the bean-counters who talk about maximising company profits, I can't understand why price point has spread so widely in popular American parlance. As far as I can tell, the term is exactly synonymous with price; do people use it the way they do the word 'monies' — to sound clever on the cheap — or is there actually a difference between the two terms?

Best Answer

It basically signifies that one is discussing price specifically in terms of how it relates to the demand curve.

If I had to guess, I'd say its gratuitous use probably started with conversations between corporate executives and accountants where the term was being used precisely, moving from there to other executives who were at the meeting, didn't understand the term but thought it sounded good and so tried to imitate the people who knew what they were talking about, gradually spreading out into the culture from there. So, yeah, fundamentally people imitating each other to try to sound clever.