Donny’s Discount Gas!
Possibly because people are becoming hip to the .99 pricing and it doesn’t work as well as it used to. You can bet that Wal-Mart knows exactly when to use 77, 87 or 97 cent pricing and why they do it. Their labor practices are open to criticism but they are masters of retail marketing.
Some places will have all sales prices end in another number like .83 so they know it’s on sale when they ring it up. REI does that because you don’t get cash back on sale items.
Walmart competes almost entirely on price. Odd numbers make you notice and remember the price more vividly. And, for some reason, $2.88 seems a lot lower than $2.99. Plus, those people who have learned to automatically round $0.99 get thrown by the other numbers. And Walmart makes a big deal out of constantly lowering prices when they can.
I guess that’s another reason that Walmart has zero appeal to me in my region: I automatically round everything up and don’t give a crap about the pennies. If they really, really want to be successful, they need to help our economy massively devalue the dollar, so that they can operate like they do in Mexico:
I like most Walmarts in Mexico, but there the price comparisons appear meaningful (even when they’re still truly not). They’ll have displays of, say, Valle Orange Juice with a sign saying “$35 at Walmart, $38 at Mega.” You see that $3 difference and think, “Wow! That’s incredible.” Never mind the fact that $3 is only about US30¢.
I think some of the small stuff, the $2.88 actually is as much cheaper as they can make it compared to $2…99 elsewhere.