“…the average person treats a price ending in .99 as if it were 15 to 20 cents lower.”
The tendency is called left-digit bias, when the leftmost digit of a number disproportionately influences decision-making. In this case, even though the real difference is only a penny, research shows that, to the average person, $4.99 seems 15 to 20 cents cheaper than $5.00 – which results in selling 3 to 5 percent more units than at a price of $5.00"
Why Literally (Almost) Every Price Ends in 99 Cents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing
EDIT: The left-digit bias is not just pennies / cents. It applies when going from $99 to $100…$399 to $400…$999 to $1000 etc.
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?
Wouldn’t the cashier get more opportunities to swipe money every time they open the drawer? And how would they explain the drawer not adding up at the end of the shift?
If the price was exactly $10 and the customer had exactly $10, the cashier didnt have to open the drawer at all. There is no record of any sale, the drawer doesnt have to add up because the money never went in and the only way to prove that they stole that $10 in their pocket is to catch them in the act.
What, why tf wouldn’t the cashier have to open the drawer? Why wouldn’t they have to record the sale? They’d still have to account for the loss of inventory. Even if they did the 99 cent thing all a cashier would have to do is keep a pocket full of pennies to be able to do the exact same thing. None of that makes sense as an explanation.
Well, it makes sense and seems plausible to me. With the speculated origin being the late 1800s when there were no cameras and no software system used for tracking inventory.
The lack of a computer system is all the more reason why it would need to be rung in the cash register and typed or written up. With no co.puter, everything has to be done by hand and there’s no way anyone would be able to recall every transaction in a given day by memory.
If it was say fruit, or beer in a bar, one isn’t counted that close bulk and the other, you could just wait till you sell six and then ring it through as a six pack to go.
The origin is speculated to be the late 1800s. Counting the drawer and drawers adding up is easy now because we use computers. Imagine a General Store in 1885 and you can see how this is plausible.