[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by 2BNTV

It's a psychological tatic used by retailers, as it just sounds like, less money but it's not. It is $20, for the product, in reality. That's why gas stations charge $3.199 instead of $3.20. That penny certainly adds up when you think of the amount of gas, consumed in this country. The penny will be around for a long time. Many businesses can and will make a lot of money off the penny, when you think of millions/billions of people that buy their products.

To us, it seems useless, as it appears to be such a small amount of money but the corporations probably won't think of it that way. IMHO

While it certainly started out that way, I don't think that anyone is "fooled" by it any longer. Most retailers today use it as a code. .97 means the item is on clearance, .98 means it's on sale this week, .99 is the regular price. These are not standardized codes throughout the retail industry, it's just an example. I worked for a few different retailers and we'd have to go changing the tags around every week depending on what was on sale.