ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the consumer behavior research that bears on some important “executional” aspects of a price advertisement. The common practice of choosing the rightmost digits of an advertised price so that the price falls just below a round number has a long history in American retailing. Perhaps the price-ending effect that has been most commonly hypothesized is that just-below endings will lead the consumer to perceive the level of the price as not just a little below, but substantially below the round-number price. Underestimation and meaning effects are ways in which expressing a price with a just-below ending can have an immediate effect on the consumer. If an inflated discount claim can compromise consumer perceptions of an advertiser’s sincerity, honesty, and dependability, then the possible benefits of such a practice are quite unlikely to be worth the costs.
