Penny wise and pound foolish: The left-digit effect in price cognition
Manoj Thomas and Vicki Morwitz report five experiments on when and why a price ending in nine is seen as lower than the price one cent above it. The effect appears only when the leftmost digit changes, as between 2.99 and 3.00, and it depends on how close the price is to the price it is compared with. The authors also find the same effect with multidigit numbers other than prices.
Manoj Thomas and Vicki Morwitz report five experiments on when and why a price ending in nine is seen as lower than the price one cent above it. The effect appears only when the leftmost digit changes, as between 2.99 and 3.00, and it depends on how close the price is to the price it is compared with. The authors also find the same effect with multidigit numbers other than prices.
Written from the abstract as published with the paper in its OpenAlex record, read 2026-10-29.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Thomas, M., & Morwitz, V. (2005). Penny wise and pound foolish: The left-digit effect in price cognition. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(1), 54-64. doi:10.1086/429600 https://doi.org/10.1086/429600