If I had to choose between a price tag that was $4.99 and another that was $5, I would go for the latter. This is because the price physically looks smaller by having less digits, and the price differential isn't big enough to offset that. It also coincides with the $5 dollar bill in my wallet, making me think "This is an exact match with my budget!"...but the reality of taxation would destroy that thought, making me actually add at least $2 to the price.

I always tell my wife - "It was only $5.00" Its a great marketing technique and can be used not only by GOG. ;-)

I hardly ever notice *.99 anymore. I just mentally round the price up whenever I see *.99

It's too bad GOG is using *.99. I wouldn't mind it if they rounded up their prices.

Only if you pay me the 2 dollars I saved by this!

You know what? That totally applies!

Wooo! Thanks GOG!

I think it does.

I'm sure that after some thinking, people will infer the correct price, but I think they count on that small time frame it takes for you to process things to make an impact.

There is a common saying: "You never get a second chance to make a good first impression".

Take an hypothetical scenario:

You are shopping around in a store (or on a digital web page, doesn't matter).

Then, you pass on some product that is priced at 10$, but you have it firmly set in your mind that 10$ is too pricy for such a product so you'll pass it without giving it a second thought.

Now, let's say it's 9.99$. For at least a split second, you'll look at the most significant digit (yes, people don't analyze the entire price as a whole, they break it down into the sum of it's parts... I do it all the time when I do arithmetic... it's one of the oldest arithmetic trick in the book) and deduce that it is less than 10$.

For that split second, they will actually take a look at the product and consider the product because it got past the "price gate" in the brain.

Yes, the person will then look at the cents, see 99 cents, round it up to 1 dollar and add the dollar to the most significant digit, making it 10.

But it's too late, the product already got past the price gate and is now in the person's head.

From there, it really depends on how attractive the marketing gurus made whatever is on the box.

Does it have cool colors? Cool shapes? A cool title? Does it highlight well the special features the product has that other similar products don't have? Etc.

You need to consider how the human brain actually works, rather than consider it like a perfect disembodied machine tied to some perfect universal logic.

Is it so hard to pretend that it's $5 in your mind?

HA! :D

You see, that's the trick right there. ;)

Okay, I buy all that. One might also argue, however, that, while browsing, I'll see a $10 price and, in that split second, think "Wow! an honest merchant who is not into all the mind games. Think I'll look further into their products."

It's only mind games if you fall for it.

Sure, but there must be LOTS of people falling for it since this and other marketing ploys are used extensively.

Who in 2012 would fall for the 99-cents "trickery"? I suppose people in countries that have really inflated currencies (in other words countries that don't bother with pennies) would see a $4.99 game and think, oooh cheap, but they would catch on fairly quickly.

There's nothing dishonest about it. In fact, it is completely honest. The price says _.99, and guess what, the price is _.99. No lies, no deception. What you see is what you get. See the price on the website? Guess what, that's the price you pay. Take personality responsibility for yourself. There is no deception or trickery here. The price is plainly listed and you literally pay for exactly the price that is listed.

Could be if the morality of it was that deeply inscribed into the unconscious part of your brain that you'd quickly notice, but most people don't think about those things.

From a sales perspective, it's really about grabbing the customers' attention and it starts with the unconscious processing that happens when the customer first lays eyes on the product.

We all fall for those mind games to some extent, because ~98% of our thoughts happen below the level of consciousness.

You size up things based on criteria that might seem inane once you pause to consider them, because you need to have some sort of opinion about those things for your survival and there are just too many things to process for you to do an in-depth analysis about everything.

Nothing would ever get done if people thought like that.

Infinitely precise values are impossible in the human mind (and are impossible to measure in the real world) so some sort of rounding inevitably occurs.

Managing this rounding for the numbers to be sufficiently accurate for your purpose is part of a good analysis.

I would prefer "5.00" to "4.99" because I'm one of those who sees it as the same thing. And it is a marketing ploy with no justification other than "Hey, people will look at it as 4 and change rather than 5". Nevermind the fact that it's only one cent off. I guess paying that extra cent and having flat prices would be worse to people than having to "mentally adjust" to the horror of it.

It's like those stupid "for under 20 dollars" ads - which usually means 19.95 or 19.99, which may as well be 20.