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Psychological pricing (also price ending, charm pricing) is a pricing/marketing strategy based on the theory that certain prices have a psychological impact. Retail prices are often expressed as "odd prices": a little less than a round number, e.g. $19.99 or £2.98. Consumers tend to perceive “odd prices” as being significantly lower than they actually are, tending to round to the next lowest monetary unit. Thus, prices such as $1.99 are associated with spending $1 rather than $2. The theory that drives this is that lower pricing such as this institutes greater demand than if consumers were perfectly rational. Psychological pricing is one cause of price points. ==Overview== According to a 1997 study published in the ''Marketing Bulletin'', approximately 60% of prices in advertising material ended in the digit 9, 30% ended in the digit 5, 7% ended in the digit 0 and the remaining seven digits combined accounted for only slightly over 3% of prices evaluated.〔(The Widespread Use Of Odd Pricing In The Retail Sector ), ''Marketing Bulletin'', 1997, 8, Research Note 1, J Holdershaw, P Gendall and R Garland〕 In the UK, before the withdrawal of the halfpenny coin in 1969, prices often ended in 11d (elevenpence halfpenny: just under a shilling, which was 12d). This is still seen today in gasoline (petrol) pricing ending in of the local currency's smallest denomination; for example in the US the price of a gallon of gasoline almost always ends in US$0.009 (e.g. US$3.289). In a traditional cash transaction, fractional pricing imposes tangible costs on the vendor (printing fractional prices), the cashier (producing awkward change) and the customer (stowing the change). These factors have become less relevant with the increased use of checks, credit and debit cards and other forms of currency-free exchange; also, the addition of sales tax makes the pre-tax price less relevant to the amount of change (although in Europe the sales tax is generally included in the shelf price). The psychological pricing theory is based on one or more of the following hypotheses: * The first theory that explains the rationale for odd pricing is prospect theory. This theory says that "consumers facing uncertainty in decision making, base the value of an alternative on gains or losses offered by the alternative, relative to some reference point, rather than on final absolute states of wealth or welfare". This theory is based on the fact that losses mean more than gains. So based on that criteria, one would think that something only a few cents under a whole dollar would actually be beneficial to the price. This theory works so well because of how the "reference price" is established by the consumer. The reference price for something that is $19.98 would be $20. This establishes the odd pricing as a better deal. * Judgments of numerical differences are anchored on left-most digits, a behavioral phenomenon referred to as the left-digit anchoring effect. This hypothesis suggests that people perceive the difference between 1.99 and 3.00 to be closer to 2.01 than to 1.01 because their judgments are anchored on the left-most digit. * Consumers ignore the least significant digits rather than do the proper rounding. Even though the cents are seen and not totally ignored, they may subconsciously be partially ignored. Keith Coulter, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Management, Clark University suggests that this effect may be enhanced when the cents are printed smaller (for example, $1999). * Fractional prices suggest to consumers that goods are marked at the lowest possible price. * When items are listed in a way that is segregated into price bands (such as an online real estate search), price ending is used to keep an item in a lower band, to be seen by more potential purchasers. The theory of psychological pricing is controversial. Some studies show that buyers, even young children, have a very sophisticated understanding of true cost and relative value and that, to the limits of the accuracy of the test, they behave rationally. Other researchers claim that this ignores the non-rational nature of the phenomenon and that acceptance of the theory requires belief in a subconscious level of thought processes, a belief that economic models tend to deny or ignore. Results from research using modern scanner data are mixed. Now that many customers are used to odd pricing, some restaurants and high-end retailers psychologically-price in even numbers in an attempt to reinforce their brand image of quality and sophistication. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Psychological pricing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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