I love buying when prices are quoted in even amounts, especially if they include the tax. It makes me sad that we humans are so affected by tactics like this and that sellers (rationally) take advantage of them.
Me too. I know I'm in the minority with this, but I much prefer to do business (repeatedly) with a firm that isn't employing bullshit tactics. It would be interesting to see a study that reflects the whole cost-per-customer, since resorting to such pricing tricks means you're inevitably attracting consumers who are extremely price driven and who may be harder to upsell or retain.
There's a burrito chain in the northeast US called Boloco, and while their prices seem pretty arbitrary, all of the post tax prices are always whole dollar amounts. It's the only place I know of in Boston that does that.
As a Brit, I was amazed first time I went to the States with this idea of shops not putting the actual price you're going to pay on stuff.
I don't care how much money the shop is getting, as opposed to the state. All I want to know is how much money I'm going to be spending to get the thing, and I don't want to have to do calculations to work it out.
As an American, I'm used to our system, but I don't like it ... but, the tricky part in the US is that sales tax(es) aren't national, so prices differ at state, county, city, and sub-city areas. I single café can build the tax price into their prices, which I do see occasionally, but there's no way to advertise a price of a something, including the tax, nationally (or even across all of my city, Minneapolis, for example).
I think the research showing that -1 pricing works for commodity items might not hold when the customer is more discerning and thus, as in my case, values a perceived respectful attitude from the company in pricing things on the even.
Outside the US, prices are more normal. I suspect that the tax issue in particular reflects the fact that taxes are different in every different city in the US, which makes tax-included prices hard to advertise.
