So, I've always had this doubt and I hoped that you beautiful and smart people could enlighten me. For example "ZOMG!!1! George Foreman Grill is da best of da best dude, and it can be yours for only 499 dolars and 99 cents!!" Why, WHY, not 500 dollars? Why they want us to save that damn cent? It's a franco masonic jew conspiracy, or is it a very stupid answer that I fail to see? Anyways, I'm off to sleep.
Actually i had this answered for me once long ago, but i forgot so this would be very interesting to see. I think it has something to do with taxes if im not mistaken.
I think reason they do that is because of "subliminal messages" the idea that if you look quickly you will think it is under 500 dollars and not notic the hole 99 cents and there for think your getting a deal and buy it, but in the end they should just round it up.
It's like hey this thing is $10, nah too much for that piece of shit. The the same thing is $9.99. Sounds good.
I also thought that it was because it sounded cheaper, but that idea sounded too simple for me I guess things are not always so complex.
It's called psychological pricing. The whole idea is to make you think you are actually paying less for the item than you really are. However now a days most people see through this and when asked to report how much they spent on an item they will say $5 instead of $4.99. That being said some stores are shifting their pricing strategy based on studies which show that when people are asked to pay a different price for an item, say $4.75 they will actually report to their friends and families they paid $4 for the item instead of $5, so people will round down the prince when it really should be rounded up.
Mmm interesting. All points to the fact that marketing people are evil and want to control our minds; although I'm a little bias so I may be wrong (?
But why does Dettol kill 99% of bacteria? That's not even the price for it, but they still insist on using "99%".
That's probably because there must be a super mega bacteria wich could only be killed with a nuclear bomb, so they have to say their product can kill almost all of them.
Presumably they don't want to be sued when some saddo from InjuryLawyers2U (not even InjuryLawyers4U) shows that one microbe survived. As for the pricing thing, I don't get why they keep doing it, 'cos we all saw through it years ago.
I asked why we didn't just invent 99p coins and then I was told that the 1p was "the guy's wages" when I was really young. I'm starting to wonder if that is the case.
