“…the average person treats a price ending in .99 as if it were 15 to 20 cents lower.”
The tendency is called left-digit bias, when the leftmost digit of a number disproportionately influences decision-making. In this case, even though the real difference is only a penny, research shows that, to the average person, $4.99 seems 15 to 20 cents cheaper than $5.00 – which results in selling 3 to 5 percent more units than at a price of $5.00"
One of the reasons this originally gained popularity hasnt been mentioned.
Retailers used it as a tool to force employees using cash registers to open the register to give customers their small denomination change. If prices were a flat number its a lot easier for a shop assistant with sticky fingers to just pocket the money if the customer had the exact price.
that sounds apocryphal as fuck. not gonna press you for a source but I don’t buy that for a second.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_register
I mean it is wikipedia, but still… its under the “History” section.
one fella supposedly makes this claim (Bill Bryson) and if you try to follow the link they give to his book it contains nothing about the subject nor could it be found by search for the key terms so I remain unconvinced. Bill Bryson was smoking the pot.
I’ve found a ton of things he’s claimed in books to have really questionable sources (i.e. he makes claims and positions as truth but doesn’t mention that those things are guesses at best)
Wouldn’t the cashier get more opportunities to swipe money every time they open the drawer? And how would they explain the drawer not adding up at the end of the shift?
If the price was exactly $10 and the customer had exactly $10, the cashier didnt have to open the drawer at all. There is no record of any sale, the drawer doesnt have to add up because the money never went in and the only way to prove that they stole that $10 in their pocket is to catch them in the act.
What, why tf wouldn’t the cashier have to open the drawer? Why wouldn’t they have to record the sale? They’d still have to account for the loss of inventory. Even if they did the 99 cent thing all a cashier would have to do is keep a pocket full of pennies to be able to do the exact same thing. None of that makes sense as an explanation.
Well, it makes sense and seems plausible to me. With the speculated origin being the late 1800s when there were no cameras and no software system used for tracking inventory.
If it was say fruit, or beer in a bar, one isn’t counted that close bulk and the other, you could just wait till you sell six and then ring it through as a six pack to go.