“…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"
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)