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My general rule for shopping is that the real price of an item is the lowest price that it routinely goes "on sale" for.

Some examples (in my area):

- The real price of a can of Coke at my grocery store is $.25/can or $3.00/12pk

- The real price of Aerie underwear is $3.50/pair.

- The real price of KitchenAid stand mixers is $189.99

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I do that mentally as well, but I generally ignore the word “sale”, and just focus on the most frequent low price.

Around a decade ago I regularly bought a particular food product for $10.99. Then one week it was 13.99. The following week it was “on sale” for 11.99. Then it went up to 12.99 for a few weeks before going back to 10.99. It was eye opening and I also learned to stock certain products.

This won't work for loss leader discount though.

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