EDIT 2: If you have a car for sale and you want $10,000 for it are you listing it for $10,000 or $9995?
which results in selling 3 to 5 percent more units than at a price of $5.00"
Well 5% more units when I have 1 unit to sell is still 1 unit. I’m not getting more money by doing this asshole psych 101 trick. Sooo I’ll stick with being a decent person.
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Thats just the whole second hand market strategy. First bid is always close to 70% of the asking price, so you make sure that 70% is actually what you want for it.
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No, this is proving the use case different: Your logic would put the car at 9995, to present it as cheap. The actual advice is to put it at 12000, higher, to present it as expensive, and then “allow” the buyer to haggle you down.
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Not if the intention is to make it look expensive. Bugatti’s don’t sell fot 499999.
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The problem isn’t the effect, the problem is you don’t seem to understand what it actually does. The idea is to reduce the price in such a way that a small discount appears larger, increase sales, and make the reduction back in volume. It works, and makes sense, and is done, if and only if you compete on price and trade in volume.
Your title is, at the time of writing: “People live their whole lives watching corporations end prices with 99 yet when they list their own items for sale they choose a whole round number and never question it.” This thread is full of people giving you reasons why they don’t or wouldn’t do that, meaning they clearly do question it, and are deciding against it.
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It’s not decent to use psychological manipulation on others in order to benefit yourself. As they said, why go r through this just to earn an extra $5 when selling a single vehicle?
You mean 5$ less
Still 3-5% more possible buyers for your car by the logic I guess. Not that I agree with the system but marketing is fucked.
Yeah…we all understand the trick and hate it.
Since I’m not desperate for money, I won’t do it as a matter of principle. What that principle is exactly, I don’t know…
Honesty? It only works if you succeed in tricking people.
Devils advocate but I absolutely list my online prices at $XX.99 because people are more willing to buy from a seller who seems like a legit business instead of a private person. This is also why I make kinda arbitrary prices like $113.99 instead of something like $115 even.
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With a name like
PP_BOY_how could you be anything but legit? /s lol
My favorite is gas is (for example) 2.99 and 9/10ths. Talk about desperately reaching for that left-digit bias.
So… 2.999?
Whenever I visit the US and see the gas stations with the 9/10 cent sticker pasted on the signs it makes me laugh internally.
Here in the UK our petrol prices end in .9 pence 🙃
It’s a dark pattern. Maybe at one point in time people would be tricked into believing $3.99 was emotionally a lot less than $4 but we’ve grown up with it now for several generations. Everyone knows it costs more anyway because of taxes not being applied until the register. The mistrust is built into the system out of tradition more than anything.
Everyone knows it costs more anyway because of taxes not being applied until the register.
Well, that’s only if you’re in the US.
This trips you up so many times if you visit the US from somewhere else. The number of times I’d see a snack listed for 99c, have a dollar bill on me and then they ask for like $1.12 is higher than I’d like to admit.
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It still works at scale. If I’m selling a couch on craigslist for $10, I’d have to be a massive butthole to advertise it at $9.99. The fuck am I going to do, give them a penny in change? $10 is $10. I only need to sell it once, and I do not have the patience to deal with someone looking to haggle.
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Then I want $400. Like I said, I onlyhave to sell it once. I don’t need to sell it to more than one person.
And if I saw someone selling a refrigerator for $399, personally it would make me doubt their trustworthiness.
The left digit bias is real over large groups of people. You’re going to sell more laptops at $399 because of left digit bias, but it doesn’t make a discernable difference when you’re only selling one. And again, then I have to deal with making change. Somebody’s going to hand me four hundred dollar bills, and I’m going to dig into my pocket for a crumpled single? Or maybe three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel?
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That’s not a persuasive argument. I’m not interested in haggling. The price is $10. If you see that and think “Oh, I’ll offer $5” then the answer is “no”. We’re sure as shit not going to meet in the middle at $7.50.
Same argument at $400. That’s what I want to get for it, which is why I put that price on it. I don’t want $399 or $250, because life is too short and I’m not that desperate to sell anything. I’d rather give it away for free than haggle with someone over the price. I don’t need to sell it today, and I’m happy to wait for someone who is willing to pay the asking price. I’m not running a pawn shop.
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Right, and my point is that we don’t question it because it would be absurd to sell one-off items on-digit-removed from the actual selling price. I wouldn’t buy anything from someone selling shit on craigslist for $99 because it’s the sort of dishonest advertising that takes advantage of a psychological bias. I understand why Walmart does it, but that doesn’t make it a smart thing that good people do. It’s ths sort of deceptive thing greedy people do.
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Sort by lowest price is what matters now.
Thats why I sell at a xx98.87 price point.
/race to the bottom
Some days ago I asked the price for something and the attendant said “fifteen”; but then when it put the price in card reader it was 14.99 🤔
I always round up.
I don’t get this idea that 99 makes your brain feel like the price is lower, I don’t know that I’ve experienced it. 99¢ is $1. $49.99 is $50. Plus tax. Who are these “average” people that give themselves a magical mental discount?
Sadly I’m one of them
I love that the article that you didn’t read begins with:
Think you’re too savvy to be influenced by prices that end in .99, like $4.99? Think again. A 2018 UC Berkeley study found that the average person treats a price ending in .99 as if it were 15 to 20 cents lower.
Because I have no interest in carrying around coins to make change
My head went straight to yard sale prices and thought watching someone pull out 99 cents sounds annoying… in the end the psychology makes sense but a flat number cash or card seems more convenient to the average Joe I’m selling to.
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I go out of my way to double back and read 4.99 again as 5. I’m sure I’m not immune but I’m doing my best, aye?
I have some respect for the revolutionaries such as Factorio on Steam who refuse to do this. Though at the end of the day that too is, or can (and will) be, just a marketing ploy to stand out.
Unless you shop at Walmart, which literally promises to not end prices in 0, 5 or 9. All this really means is that most things are $XX.98 instead of $XX.99 tho.
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My brain rounds UP everything to the nearest integer. Pi is 4, joke’s on you.
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I’m not shitting on your post, it was very interesting! If / whenever I need to sell a product, I’ll think about it.
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If the scale you are calculating on is big enough pi is 10
Found the
engineerastrophysicist
How is this a shower thought?
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Seems like the type of thing I’d randomly think of in the shower
(Also, where else would it go?)
