10 Ways Retailers Trick You Into Spending More
Tweaking the Numbers
You’ve probably already noticed that stores are more likely to price their products at $3.99 or $49.99 rather than a flat $4 or $50. The idea is that when you see the number $49.99, your mind notices the initial figure and skips over the rest. You think of the item as costing only “40-something dollars” rather than roughly 50 dollars. A 1996 study in the Journal of Retailing confirmed that stores sell more when they offer prices ending with “.99” rather than rounded off to the nearest dollar.
