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Why $1.99 and not $2? That little penny makes a big difference.

What鈥檚 the deal with all the .99s we see at the grocery store?

You stroll through the bread aisle and grab an eight-pack of hot dog buns for $1.99. You grab a 12-pack of Coca-Colas for $4.99. While you鈥檙e at it, you purchase a gallon of tea for $2.99 and a pack of Bubba Burgers for $8.99. Thinking your party might turn festive, you grab two bottles of Chianti for $12.99 each.

Why not just round the prices up?

鈥淭here鈥檚 a hypothesis in the retail industry that customers ignore everything after the decimal,鈥� explains associate professor of marketing Dan Padgett, who studies the psychology of pricing. 鈥淚f something is $14.99, then the customer often sees the $14 and ignores the .99. It鈥檚 a way to capture more every time you sell a product.鈥�

鈥淲e鈥檝e done some research where we have stopped people at the grocery store and asked them, 鈥楪ive us an estimate of how much is in your buggy,鈥欌�� Padgett notes. 鈥淲e asked them to literally predict how much they had spent so far. They鈥檙e not very good at it (suggesting again that customers ignore the $.99 attached to most grocery items).鈥�

Padgett, who co-authored pricing research 鈥淟eft Behind: The Potential Downside of Odd-Ended Pricing鈥� with fellow 91看片 College associate professor James Carver, identified another motive behind the .99 pricing. 鈥淧art two 鈥� there is also a hypothesis out there that if the customer sees the .99, they take it as a small discount from whatever the next integer must be,鈥� he says.

Instead of paying $30 for a new shirt, the consumer pays $29.99 and goes home feeling he got a deal.

But odd-numbered pricing that ends a penny short doesn鈥檛 work best for all products or services, Padgett says. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 always see it when you go into the jewelry store, for example, and you鈥檙e looking at a necklace. The reason why you don鈥檛 see it that way, at least in the better stores, is because they realize that the price communicates the luxury and the value of an item. In that scenario, the zero helps you rather than having .99 endings.鈥�

This philosophy doesn鈥檛 necessarily apply only to luxury items. Prices for high-risk services, too, should not end in .99s. 鈥淭hink about LASIK surgery,鈥� Padgett says. 鈥淚f you can get your LASIK done for $299.99 an eye versus $300, it is way more preferred to use the $300. Why? It鈥檚 a high-risk service and as a result, I want that to be more valuable and, hence, the communication of the price leads me to believe it has higher value or comes with a better quality. The assumption is prices that end with .99s are discounted. I don鈥檛 want discount on something that鈥檚 high risk.鈥�

The next time you go shopping for everyday household items, or must undergo an important procedure, think about the listed prices and the strategy behind them.

鈥淧ricing is often misunderstood, and it鈥檚 often used as a heavy-handed weapon,鈥� Padgett says.