The Widespread Use of Odd Pricing in the Retail Sector.”Marketing Bulletin 8

All home-drop advertising material, and all advertising displayed in two free weekly newspapers, and the local daily (Manawatu Evening Standard) was analysed over a seven day period to identify the prevalence of odd pricing. Each advertisement was analysed on the basis of the right-most digit displayed. In other words, if cents endings were used, the analysis was based on the cents ending, regardless of the whole dollar amounts shown. In the case of whole dollar amounts, again the analysis was based on the last digit, or lowest dollar numeral. An analysis of 840 advertisements revealed that odd prices, in particular prices ending in the digit 9, clearly outnumbered all other price endings. In total, 87 % of prices were defined as odd prices. Approximately 60 % of prices ended in the digit 9, with a further 30 % of prices ending in the digit 5. Thus, approximately 90 % of prices ended in either "9 " or "5". Three digits (0, 5, 9) accounted for nearly 97 % of price endings, with the remaining seven digits accounting for only slightly over 3%. Whatever pricing methods retailers use, there is a definite bias in favour of odd price endings