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People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

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Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#191

Post by Nevermark »

satvikpendem wrote: post #159
Nevermark wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it is so well known, at some point it isn’t a “trick” anymore, right? It isn’t as if retailers can fight reality. Or that they can “come clean” by putting fine print under prices explaining why they are ending prices in 9. Which would create a major distraction messing with any sale. It is just real-world reliable wackiness that both sellers and purchasers should be aware of. There is no purely objective way to…

> Or that they can “come clean” by putting fine print under prices explaining why they are ending prices in 9. Which would create a major distraction messing with any sale. Why would they do that? That might lessen their sales if people knew of the effect, as a nocebo.

I agree(d).

> Which would create a major distraction messing with any sale.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#192

Post by samatman »

m463 wrote: post #162
samatman wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer facing reasons for receipts in no particular order: - Expensing purchases to their employer or self-owned business - Record of sale to be used in returns - Reconciliation of spending with cheques or credit card statements - Budgeting and accounting generally

My suspicion is that most business owners don't care about ANY of that. even returns - it might actually be enough friction that returns would go down. for example, why would a donut shop give receipts? I have a friend who recently opened a bar. He did cash in the beginning, but finally got the electronic payments for the bar installed. He immediately caught a bartender stealing. He noticed that at the start, the bar…

> for example, why would a donut shop give receipts?

Because of members of a social club, whose turn it is to buy the donuts, wants to have it to give to the treasurer so that it can count against their monthly dues.

The more general answer is because, at this point in time, a receipt is universally expected. I'm not denying that businesses have internal reasons to hand them out, and keep a copy, I'm saying that customer demand played a role at the time this convention was established. They've become increasingly useless on the customer side, except for business expenses, where they remain vital.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#193

Post by HocusLocus »

johnisgood wrote: post #186
feetsoup wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's easy to say, but when it comes to shopping at the store, picking up several items and not actively thinking about it, are you really sure you aren't unconsciously interpreting that 9.99 differently from 10? Personally, I like to think that doesn't work on me, but at the same time I've caught myself saying something was '9 dollars' when I've been distracted and it was in fact 9.99. And even if 9.99 really is 10…

I found it odd that my girlfriend would say out the cents, because personally I have always been rounding up, and never considered the cents, for example.

I try to keep two things in my head when filling a grocery cart, an accurate tally of dollars and a numberless sense of "where in the dollar the cents remainder is presently", like the position of a progress bar on a screen. I find a remembered visual progress bar does not distract me from the arithmetic, and when I spot one of those silly prices ending in .95 or .99 the bar resets to a tiny bit and I add a dollar. My mental progress bar generally jumps in approximate ~1/4 steps and when the total is accurate to within $2 with many items that is a win.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#194

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

chmod775 wrote: post #135
agumonkey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of people who tried selling sturdy repairable phones with longer battery life. Even when people complained about battery issues etc. They kept buying the thinnest flagship. Mass markets are mass market.

> Reminds me of people who tried selling sturdy repairable phones with longer battery life. My brother buys these. They survive up to a year in his "care", rather than the usual 3-4 months of flimsier phones. They all end up with cracked screens within months though. Almost no mainstream consumer electronics nowadays are meant for people who lead active lives (outside of planned and streamlined activities like going…

Get your brother a glass screen protector for his phone. I haven't cracked a phone screen in a decade yet I've gone through many cracked screen protectors.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#195

Post by fredstar »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #9

I never like thinking of pricing in this way. When you price something as $9.99, you're signaling to your customer that you're trying to manipulate them. Whereas a flat $10 is honest. Integrity means a lot. The software I sell is priced in whole numbers. However, the magnitude of effect claimed in the article is huge. It's the difference between selling at cost and a huge margin. Between doing well and shutting down…

I agree in part. We should have more people checking science like this project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility_Project Overall I feel (and have no proof) that science is under pressure from so many angles. Climate change denial, conspiracy theorists and, as you ask, way more subtle things like overhyping marginal effects.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#196

Post by HaZeust »

OJFord wrote: post #163
johnnyanmac wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>who cares about a technique for tracking total number of any items sold? Pre-digital calculator salesmen? Time is money and being able to do a quick mental math can be helpful before doing a more detailed inventory >you could then just divide by the price, you don't need to coerce the total into being a tally mod 100. That's why they gave more than one reason. Why laser focus on criticizing a single one?

> Pre-digital calculator salesmen? For what purpose? Say you're a salesman of 7 different products/SKUs; you sold 186 products today. What do you do with that information?

?? It lets me know how effective a product I'm offering is being sold? What do you mean?

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#197

Post by chmod775 »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #194
chmod775 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me of people who tried selling sturdy repairable phones with longer battery life. My brother buys these. They survive up to a year in his "care", rather than the usual 3-4 months of flimsier phones. They all end up with cracked screens within months though. Almost no mainstream consumer electronics nowadays are meant for people who lead active lives (outside of planned and streamlined activities like going…

Get your brother a glass screen protector for his phone. I haven't cracked a phone screen in a decade yet I've gone through many cracked screen protectors.

They're just going to crack right along with the screen. The form factor of modern phones combined with the fact that they're made from materials that will break rather than survive some deformation is a death sentence. These things being in the wrong pocket as you carry something heavy, or merely you sitting on them, will immediately crack their screens and hard plastic in half. The devices are just too big and flat. Any attempt at creating rugged variants usually consists of surrounding those fragile off-the-shelf consumer parts with copious amounts of padding. Now it's even bigger and the added weight is not going to help with surviving drops.

Look at the form factor of something like the Garmin eTrex[1] series and it should be immediately apparent why these devices can outlive about a dozen phones. Sit on it, throw it on the ground, put it in a backpack and throw it down a cliff, they'll be fine. Maybe dented and scratched, but they'll still help you find your way. They're small devices that are very round-ish in every dimension, and they're also pretty light, meaning there's very little energy that needs to be dissipated when they impact something.

Adding padding and protection only helps up to a point. To make smartphones actually durable, you'd need to take away from them. That means little or no glass at all. Use light materials that functionally survive deformation and point contact impacts. Also preferably it would run on AA batteries.

[1] https://bikepacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/garmin-et...

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#198

Post by SergeAx »

When counting my share of the restaurant bill, I always have to make a cognitive effort to round all prices up one last digit. However, when visiting a restaurant, I don't care about individual prices; I can easily see the restaurant's "price grade" by looking at several menu items. These mind tricks make me sad.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#199

Post by distalx »

pempem wrote: post #170
Nevermark wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it is so well known, at some point it isn’t a “trick” anymore, right? It isn’t as if retailers can fight reality. Or that they can “come clean” by putting fine print under prices explaining why they are ending prices in 9. Which would create a major distraction messing with any sale. It is just real-world reliable wackiness that both sellers and purchasers should be aware of. There is no purely objective way to…

As you consider the issue this phrase I think is the best synopsis of your thoughts: When it is so well known, at some point it isn’t a “trick” anymore, right And yet we fall for the same tricks again and again. The most politically pressing? The number of people - internationally - who believe in a strongman leader. MLMs also occur to me. We know MLMs so well that we've literally written laws against them. There are…

FOMO (invite only), trial periods, and decoy pricing are a few tricks I've fallen for in the past. I try to be vigilant, but sometimes it's just too much.

Re: People spend more when prices end in .99 (2018)

#200

Post by Izkata »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #151
Sightline wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer. $0.01 doesn't make it affordable, it's just a mind trick. You seem to be aware of this, yet you're defending it.

1. To be frank, I'm not dying on a hill for a penny. A fool and his money... 2. Even if you point it out... What changes. Has anyone ever seriously reconsidered buying a product when you tell them it's $500 instead of $499? What's the harm being done here? 3. What call to action are you suggesting? I'd rather work for laws to include sales tax in US goods' prices than fix this "mind trick". I can't tell you how to li…

> Has anyone ever seriously reconsidered buying a product when you tell them it's $500 instead of $499?

The effect seems to be because people subconsciously see the price as $5xx and $4xx. So I would guess yes.

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