A lot of research has gone into this and for better or worse it works so well that any price not set this way is not getting the best results for the seller.
As it turns out there hasn’t been a lot of research into this. There was research on it that is the goto but I believe it references old catalog sales only(like sears) and not in store.
Edit: it may be more like people view products with a decimal price as cheap and products with whole numbers as quality.
It’s been proven, through many many studies. Even people aware of it are affected by it.
JCPenney tried changing all their prices ending with .99 to the round dollar amount. It was catastrophic for their sales, so they changed it back. It was a part of a larger plan by Ron Johnson (former senior VP of retail at Apple) to get rid of the “pricing game” of stores and to stop deceiving customers with fake sales/markdowns and deceptive pricing. It caused JCPenney’s stock to halve and then some, and got him fired within 15 months. Here’s an ad they showed that apologized to customers for using accurate & honest pricing instead of deceiving them, and begging them to come back
The power of the number “9” isn’t confined to the cents column, either. One American clothing retailer experimented by changing the price of a dress from $34 to $39 dollars and increased sales by over 30%.
Consumers are fucking idiots. Humans are stupid dumb animals that like patterns too much for their own good and short circut their brain immediately after seeing minimal information to fill in the blanks. If you like patterns so much, why don’t you marry them? Hmmm???
I married Java Design Patterns and we are happy, okay? Meet our kids Singleton and Observer.
Pfft, silly object-oriented devs. My children are named Typeclass and Iterator! Scala Design Patterns prove themselves to reign supreme once again. Enjoy sending your kids to public coding bootcamp.
Can you even breathe on that high of a horse? Don’t talk to me or my kids malloc and free ever again!
Under da sea with malloc and free 🎶
This is also why gas pumps measure gasoline to the thousandth of a gallon. Consumers LOVE to see those numbers racing upwards and think, “Whoaaaaa! Look at those numbers GO! I must be getting an awesome deal!”
It’s a deliberate psychological trick, played on you by energy companies to fool you into thinking you’re getting more than you really are.
I believe it’s actually true however. Monkey brain not so good at math. One penny changes all three digits. Big penny.
Yeah, this is like saying “ads don’t work on me”. It fundamentally misunderstands pretty much everything about the topic.
Some ads definitely have the opposite affect on me. I will never buy anything from Shane Co. I never want to hear another ad of theirs in my lifetime.
It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t work on you. People have studied it, and the number don’t lie. It increases sales, and profits over the general population.
Numbers often do lie, for example, $7.99.
That’s not what I said at all.
Yeah, what you said missed the point.
I’m not talking about ads in general, or even their effectiveness on me. I’m talking about an outlier. That it’s possible to overdo ads and have the opposite effect. That’s it.
It’s not evidence to refute the effectiveness of ads.
If I have a structured settlement but I need cash now, I’ll probably just ask a friend for a loan.
this has always just felt like propaganda from marketing people to sustain their business of selling ads to companies lol, like no most ads don’t fucking make me buy their stuff.
SOME ads make me buy their stuff, ads that are just “here’s our product, our product is good for these reasons, also here’s a cute cat”.
But ads that make me cringe with force enough to crack my spine do not fucking inspire me to buy anything from the company, they make me go out of my way to never ever support the company if i can at all help it.
The point isn’t really about the conscious level of advertising so much as what worms its way into our subconsciousness. The layers of psychology run far deeper than most of us would like to admit. Check out this clip of Derren Brown manipulating 2 guys in the ad industry to create pretty much the exact ad he forced them into
that’s vague at best and doesn’t make sense, if i’m going out of my way to not buy their stuff how the fuck would that make me somehow subconsciously buy their stuff anyways?
No, the ads that work are the ones that don’t fill you with disgust, the ones that just remind you that a product/brand exists.
And even then, an ad that actively makes me want the product is just obviously going to be the best one, you can’t make me believe that an infuriating ad is somehow better than “oh wow that’s great, i’m putting that on my shopping list right now!”
BIG PENNY
This is indeed how we see prices.
Too many time I’ve seen people call something like 8.99 as 8 bucks instead of 9.
What really gets me are real estate prices. “From the low sevens” means $749,000. That ain’t low, my dudes.
I have a lot of friends who would say that is 7 dollars.
Oil companies - $2.99&9/10
Dammit…I was going to make that joke, but you got here first! Welp. Guess I’m not original. We’re all just Lemmings…
looks at the name of this platform
DOUBLE DAMMIT!!!
9/10?
Fuel is sold to a decimal point of a cent. 188.9 cents per liter, despite the fact you cant have 0.9 of a cent.
Well, you can’t have it, the oil companies got them all!
35.99+free shipping Or 25.99+9.99 shipping
Ohh, free shipping. click
Also, if you get refund you don’t typically get shipping refunded. Definitely worth that penny here.
Always take the free shipping, even if prices are (mostly) the same. If you have to return something, you don’t always get a refund on the shipping costs.
Recently on Amazon: $10.99
+ free shipping if you have prime, which I don’t
so + $4.99Meanwhile on eBay: $5.99
+ $4.99 shippingAfter trying to return stuff on Amazon and eBay you will understand. I’ve been paying for prime 5+ years at this point, so much peace of mind.
Not that anyone asked, but my greatest frustration lately is when I order something on ebay and it shows up in an Amazon box. F THOSE COMPANIES
Companies selling on both, companies reusing used Amazon boxes, or am I missing something entirely?
I’m just the consumer so I don’t know for sure, but I believe these are cases of the company sells on both platforms but fulfills all orders via Amazon, which (a) defeats my purpose of shopping on eBay and (b) is against eBay’s rules, I believe.
$1,000+ tablet or phone. - “Fine…”
$0.99 app - “FUCK EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT!!!”
This is an important point! Consumers have different price expectations depending on the context. A $20 video game might look cheap on console but be outrageously expensive for mobile.
What gets me about most mobile games is they ask for that payment but STILL inject ads and/or other micro transactions. Or that’ll be the Price for a shitty port of a game over 20 years old, that’s worse than just emulating it. Looking at you Square Enix.
frankly most mobile games, and honestly most games in general, are just not good…
it’s basically impossible to wade through all the generic tile matching games or infinite runners or whatever low-effort tosh to find something of actual value, the vast majority of them just want you to mindlessly tap at the screen until you go into a trance and don’t notice that you started tapping on “buy corporate scrip” til your bank account runs dry
You’re not wrong sadly. One of the few enjoyable games I’ve found on mobile is the Netflix version of Bloons TD6, technically it’s paid with Netflix sub, but it’s a sub I’m not dropping ATM, so fwiw it’s good.
We have WILDLY different brains.
$600 phone - “GOD DAMMIT!!! WHY DID MY NOTE 4 FROM 2014 HAVE TO DIE??? I PAID $65 FOR THAT PHONE, AND IT WAS FUCKING GREAT!!!”
$0.00 app - “Why the hell does this calculator app need permission to access my contacts, the internet, and the ability to transfer data??? YOU’RE A GOD DAMN CALCULATOR APP!!! I’m not downloading that clear piece of spyware…”
Me with a $150 refurb and fdriod
Me: googles wtf “fdroid” is.
Oooooh…oh myyyyyy…
scene from the Matrix of Neo finally understanding the Matrix plays
Wow…they have a version of Civilization thats 23mb big, and doesn’t have access to a shitload of permissions. Plus, it explains why it needs network access. It’s ONLY for user innitiated downloads, and multiplayer…IT HAS MULTIPLAYER???
Welcome! You may also want to look at this repo.
eBay phones ftw. I’ve never bought a brand new smart phone in my life
What the price a tually is 8.07
I heard its so the cashier has to go into the til for change every transaction and cant pocket the money
There’s still tax (in the US at least)
And the register registers every sold item, so unless the cashier fakes the beep sound and the customer ignores the missing receipt, it won’t work since the till would be short. And even if the cashier bypasses the register entirely, they could keep change outside the till if they want to pocket money.
If given exact change you can just cancel the order and pocket the cash you can still get caught if they ask for a receipt or if the inventory is short and they do a deep investigation.
In my experience, cancelling a full transaction needs authorization from the supervisor via key or employee card swipe.
