“…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"
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.