Editing Psychological pricing (section)

==Historical comments==
Exactly how psychological pricing came into common use is not clear, though it is known the practice arose during the late 19th century. Scot Morris' 1979 ''Book of Strange Facts & Useless Information'' speculated that it originated when [[Melville E. Stone]] founded the ''[[Chicago Daily News]]'' in 1875 and priced it at one cent to compete with the [[nickel (U.S. coin)|nickel]] papers of the day; however, [[Cecil Adams]] has directly addressed Morris' claims, noting that Stone sold the ''News'' in 1876, and also that the ''News'' archives indicate that "prices ending in 9 (39 cents, 69 cents, etc.) were rare until well into the 1880s and weren't all that common then. The practice didn't really become widespread until the 1920s, and even then prices as often as not ended in .95, not .99."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Adams|first1=Cecil|author-link1=Cecil Adams|title=Why do prices end in .99?|url=https://www.straightdope.com/21341889/why-do-prices-end-in-99|website=[[The Straight Dope]]|date=21 February 1992}}</ref>

Others have suggested that fractional pricing was first adopted as a control on employee theft. For cash transactions with a round price, there is a chance that a dishonest cashier will pocket the bill rather than record the sale. For cash transactions with a just-below price, the cashier must nearly always make change for the customer. This generally means opening the [[cash register]] which creates a record of the sale in the register and reduces the risk of the cashier stealing from the store owner.<ref>{{cite book |last=Landsburg |first=Steven E. | author-link=Steven Landsburg |date=2012 |title=The Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life |edition=Rev. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pWS5zrF_Fz0C |location=New York |publisher=Free Press |isbn=9781451651737 }}</ref>

Since the registration is done with the process of returning change, according to [[Bill Bryson]] odd pricing came about because by charging odd amounts like 49 and 99 cents (or 45 and 95 cents when [[Nickel (United States coin)|nickels]] are more used than [[pennies]]), the cashier very probably had to open the till for the penny change and thus announce the sale.<ref name="Bryson">{{cite book|title=Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States|last=Bryson|first=Bill|publisher=William Morrow Paperbacks|year=1994|isbn=978-0380713813|pages=[https://archive.org/details/madeinamericainf00brys/page/114 114–115]|author-link=Bill Bryson|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/madeinamericainf00brys/page/114}}</ref>

In the former [[Czechoslovakia]], people called this pricing "baťovská cena" ("Baťa's price"), referring to [[Tomáš Baťa#Ba.C5.A5a.27s leadership for quality and innovation|Tomáš Baťa]], a Czech manufacturer of footwear. He began to widely use this practice in 1920.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Roma - vydavatelství, nakladatelství a lektorská činnost |url=https://www.romanakladatelstvi.cz/clanky/clanek_2.pdf |access-date=2023-01-30 |website=www.romanakladatelstvi.cz}}</ref>

Price ending has also been used by retailers to highlight sale or clearance items for administrative purposes. A retailer might end all regular prices in 95 and all sale prices in 50. This makes it easy for a buyer to identify which items are discounted when looking at a report.{{Citation needed|date=February 2010}}

In its [[2005 United Kingdom general election]] manifesto, the [[Official Monster Raving Loony Party]] proposed the introduction of a 99-pence coin to "save on change".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.loonyparty.com/index.php?page=2005-general-election-manifesto|title=The Official Monster Raving Loony Party|website=The Official Monster Raving Loony Party|language=en-US|access-date=2016-08-07}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Sonne|first1=Paul|last2=MacDonald|first2=Alistair|title=In the Longest-Running Joke in Politics, Life Imitates Farce|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703322204575225864160523470|work=Wall Street Journal|date=6 May 2010}}</ref>

A recent trend in some monetary systems as inflation gradually reduces the value of money is to eliminate the smallest denomination coin (typically 0.01 of the local currency). The total cost of purchased items is then rounded up or down to, for example, the [[Cash rounding|nearest 0.05]]. This may have an effect on future just-below pricing, especially at small retail outlets where single-item purchases are more common, encouraging vendors  to price with .98 and .99 endings, which are rounded up when .05 is the smallest denomination, while .96 and .97 are rounded down. An example of this practice is in Australia, where [[Australian 5 cent coin|5 cents]] has been the smallest denomination coin since 1992, but pricing at .98 or .99 on items under several hundred dollars is still almost universally applied (e.g.: $1.99–299.99), while goods on sale often price at .94 and its variations. Finland and the Netherlands were the first two countries using the euro currency to eliminate the 1- and 2-cent coins.