The psychology of pricing

I talked about this a lot at my UX Bristol workshop last year.

Neuroscience marketing reports a recent study on restaurant menus. Looking at how presenting the price influenced sales.

The researchers tried the following:

1. Numerical with Dollar Sign: $12.00
2. Numerical without Dollar Sign or Decimals: 12
3. Written: twelve dollars

Option two, no currency symbol or money reference performed best with patrons spending more.

The question is, Is it ethical to do this? Not giving any indication of the fact money is being spent may seem like a trick. Or is it simply that people don’t want to be worried by how much they spend?

We need to be sure if we use this approach in design we are doing it for the right reasons.