Many years ago my son asked me this question. I'm glad that I was right. Got this from YAHOO. Q: What on earth is the rationale for gas stations to list their prices to include 0.9 cents at the end? When gas was 29 cents a gallon (I remember paying 19.9 in Texas in 1968) the fractional cent might have made sense. Now it doesn't, so why keep implying that $2.39.9 a gallon is not essentially the same as $2.40? — M.W., Glen Ellyn A: That fraction of a penny goes back a lot further than 1968. Try 1918 or thereabouts, when a penny went a lot further, too. Around the time of the Great Depression, the federal government tacked a 1.5 cents per gallon tax on the stuff. Since times were already tough enough, gasoline retailers used the tried-and-true marketing trick of using the 0.9 instead of whole cents and it has been thus ever since.
I've wondered about that myself. Personally, I would rather they didn't do it, but that won't make 'em stop. When I was a kid, I used to say if I ever owned a gas station I would just use a whole number!
Yeah, uh huh. When I see gas for $2,99.9 a gallon it's $3.00 a gallon. If you buy 10 gallons of gas you saved a whole penny. Whoopee Doo. Less than 10 gallons you ain't saved ****.
Why do I have to answer 20 questions at the pump? Is this a credit card? Are you a club member? What is your zip code? Do you want a written receipt? How about a car wash? Is this your first time here? What year was the Battle of Little Bighorn?
long time advertising gimmick, to the old calculating brain seeing/hearing Two Dollars at start of $2.99 looks/sounds cheaper than Three Dollars $3.00 - look at the pricing of most new cars, etc
Although never minted, government and business long used the "mill" or 1/000th of a dollar for accounting purposes. It still lingers on, homeowners pay property tax based on the millage rate or per $1000 of value.
Agreed, your mind picks up the first number for processing the amount and you don't give the rest of the number the same attention. Notice how they advertise a new car at a really low price and then when you go to look at it, it was just sold or they try and find it to no avail while leaving you to look at their more expensive cars.
The tax theory is whooie. It's just marketing - playing to the way our minds work. The outfit that used this sign had a conscious: they listed how much in total the average joe would need, depending on the gallonage. One thing hasn't changed much too. That is, how few people can guesstimate what x number of gallons is going to cost in total, so this was a real service! I know this personally from pumping gas at the Sunoco station. People my generation and older go on and on how today's kids can't make change - well it tweren't much different in the 60s, and I'd bet a wooden nickel people suffered the same back at the dawn of the gasoline era. I mean, that was the big deal about the "modern" gas pump, in that it had what amounted to a mechanical running total calculator built into it. Big hubba! And I felt like such a gangsta - wad of paper money in my right front pocket, a fist full of change in my left front pocket. Now that I'm on a run, I'll add: What made my bosses at the drug store I worked at in high school take to me, is I caught on real quick, adding a column of numbers on the back of a paper bag, then stuffing the goods into it afterwards. We still used those push-key registers, and folks wanted to know how much the total was before you began ringing up.
"Now that I'm on a run, I'll add: What made my bosses at the drug store I worked at in high school take to me, is I caught on real quick, adding a column of numbers on the back of a paper bag, then stuffing the goods into it afterwards. We still used those push-key registers, and folks wanted to know how much the total was before you began ringing up." Yup! This is how it was when I began my first job at McDonalds. Total everything on the ticket and count back from the penny. The customers demanded the proper total and I heard them correct us a lot on the total and would also tell us how much change to give them back before they handed over the loot. We also had the push key registers.
I work at a Ford dealership, I like when they say your getting this car for a $100 over our cost. Another bunch of ****.
Like K mart and Wally World, I remember price tags ending in 3 or 7 at K mart back in high school. you could get a pair of jeans at W T Grants for 7.99 but they were much cheaper at K Mart at 7.93. You know I couldn't afford Wranglers or Levi's, they cost 8.50 a pair from the men's shop. At the gas station when you bought 10 gallons you saved a penny.
To me,it is like everything else,$3.29.9 sounds better than $3.30,kinda like $129.99 sounds better than $130,at least to some people!!You think you are getting a "DEAL" saving that 1 cent!! JMO , ROY.
all this time I thought it was the nine painters guild they are a powerful guild and not just anybody can paint a nine
There was a comedy out a few years ago where this guy who was an software engineer kept all the money that added up to less than a cent on transactions. http://www.imdb.com/***le/tt0151804/synopsis
When I was a kid in the early '50s there were 'mills' in circulation. They were plastic 'coins', in colors, with a serrated circular area on the faces, not the edge. I think by the mid '50s they were pretty much discontinued. Ray
Subliminal marketing, they make you think that you're getting it cheaper when essentially they round it up to the next dollar and screw everyone for 1c. Multiply that by millions of consumers and millions of gallons of gas and that equates to more profit to them over time. Meanwhile you think that you got a good deal.
Everybody who is aware of human psychology uses it to their advantage....even small children. It is lack of self awareness, at best, or hypocritical, at worst, to criticize others for doing what we routinely do. Ray
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