And 99 cents

    I've probably whined previously about retailers pricing everything with 99 cents at the end. Obviously it works, or they wouldn't keep doing it. The eye sees $2.99 and thinks $2 instead of three; I have an Economics degree and it gets me nearly every time. But though this annoys me, I'm not so much complaining as criticizing it as a business strategy. Because when I get to the checkout counter and find out that my purchase that I was expecting to be $7 turns out to be $9, I'm going to be pretty sorely annoyed. This happened yesterday at Whole Foods; they are possibly world champions of the "and 99 cents" strategy.
    It occurs to me that this is where the Whole Paycheck nickname came from; when every customer comes out of the store spending more than they thought they were spending, your store is going to get a (well-deserved, in this case) reputation for having very high prices. I can't help but think that Whole Foods customers would probably still buy most items if the price read $3 instead of $2.99. And maybe if we could thus keep a more accurate running count of what we're spending, we'd be less annoyed when we came out. When your business ethics compare unfavorably to Dollar General, perhaps a rethink is in order. Don't ya think?