Money is obviously important - and no one wants to overpay - but money isn't the only thing our purchases cost us. Time is a fair bit more important than money to the customer. More than likely we'll spend our money and then get more money, money is in theory infinite (wages aren't though unfortunately). But time - once we start our undeviating shuffle towards death, the moment we're born, the less and less time we have.

Pick one. Are you picking on price or an experience? 


The phenomenon of selling a brand on the experience is down to the time lost being a more worthwhile expense than any money could be. It's not new either, there's promises older than me in this list; Apple will improve your time as you'll be compelled to 'Think Different', Nike's urging you to take most the of your time with 'Just Do It' or you could simply take a minute to 'Enjoy Coca Cola'. It's behaviour that's likely to only increase as the next generation is going to amazing lengths to avoid being 'owned by their possessions' and status symbols increasingly relate to experience rather than expense. 'Psychological pricing' such as the old school idea that pricing things at '.99' makes them seems better value is having to adapt the review-powered nature of e-commerce.

In the golden age of advertising the advertiser relied on their reputation to sell an experience - now it falls to dozens of unbiased peer reviews with each product.
(credit: neat-stuff-blog)



These two factors have conspired together as a strange death knell for the humble '.99'. People don't care enough about the penny or nickle they're saving. People aren't sitting there wasting their time adding '.99' into a search for an item they'd happily buy at a penny more or less. People aren't searching with a '.99' price in mind. Searchers are mixing their terms, throwing in product names, specifications and then adding in a round price to make sure they get their results in the region of what they're prepared to spend. Psychological pricing depended on the object being directly in front of the consumer, without millions of competitive items and appreciated from the standpoint of its worth being a deceptively-smaller looking pricepoint. The web offers countless storefronts, full of real-world reviews at a huge range of prices.


This shows the return of ".99" searches against rounded numbers
(credit: social-media.co.uk)


So if you want to sell all your '.99' items, set them to '1.00', surround them with positive reviews and a compelling brand that makes the customers most valuable expenditure, their time, seem justified... and as an added plus you'll make an extra penny.