brand marketing blog

Have you ever wondered how the petrol industry conjured up their unique way of presenting fuel prices to the unsuspecting motorist? I mean, has anyone ever owned 0.9 cents? I certainly have never had a coin with the top lopped off so that it can be worth less than a cent.

Yet somehow the petrol companies have managed to create a new denomination that none of us have ever owned. I can fully appreciate and accept the Swedish rounding off method, but this fraction-of-a-cent currency thing is ludicrous.

I wonder what would happen if retailers en-mass started to take this pricing strategy to heart. Would we see products offered at the One Dollar Ninety Nine Point Nine Shop? Or would The Warehouse advertise goods at $29.99.9? Isn't it bad enough that most retailers use the $99.99 strategy to convince us that the product is in fact only $99 and not $100.

I read through the Commerce Commissions info booklet and there doesn't seem to be any law against advertising nine-tenths of a cent. But that alone doesn't make it ethical, does it? Maybe we should all write to the Commerce Commission and question this rather misleading tactic. Or maybe we should just accept it, like we do with outrageous and well orchestrated fuel price increases, and shop at the One Dollar Ninety Nine Point Nine Shop.