The .99 price tag dark pattern

Prices are an important part of any feature or story covering products or services. For readers the price is often the most important piece of information.

But there’s a problem with this.

Psychological pricing

Retailers use psychological pricing to trick customers in to thinking prices are lower than they are. Even if you’ve never heard the term before, you’ll be familiar with the idea.

Psychological pricing is when retailers price an item at $1.99 or another number ending in 9.

Researchers at New Zealand’s Massey University found 60 percent of prices on goods advertised in the local newspaper end in 9.

Other research shows consumers focus on the left-most digits in a price. So they think an item priced at $1.99 is considerably cheaper than one at $2 even though the real difference is just 0.5 percent. Not even that. Retailers don’t give customers change if they handed over two dollars.

To use a popular online term, this is a dark pattern. It hides information from readers.

The journalist’s job

It's not a journalist’s job to sell a company’s product. We are not sales or marketing people.

The job is about informing readers. We aim for accuracy. And this is where some run into a problem.

Informing readers means we shouldn’t play retailers’ Jedi mind trick games. We should write $1.99 prices in our copy as $2. That’s often the amount readers will pay.

On the other hand, accuracy demands we are sticklers for detail and list the price as $1.99.

Simplifying .99 prices

There are three reasons why journalists should round-up psychological pricing.

First, while rounded-up numbers are technically wrong, if the theory of psychological pricing is correct, the way the reader understands a rounded-up price will be closer to reality. It tells the truth.

Second, rounded numbers are simpler. You more immediately understand what spending $2 will do for you finances than spending $1.99. The price information flows faster to the readers’ brain – this is always a key goal in journalism, we aim to simplify without dumbing down.

Third, any technical inaccuracy is minor. When 99 cents rounds up to $1, the result is 99 percent correct. With all other prices the accuracy is greater still. Rounding $9.99 to $10 is just 0.1 percent out.