Prices That End in 9 Another common pricing cue is using a 9 at the end of a price to denote a bargain. In fact, this pricing tactic is so common, you'd think customers would ignore it. Think again. Response to this pricing cue is remarkable. You'd generally expect demand for an item to go down as the price goes up. Yet in our study involving the women's clothing catalog, we were able to increase demand by a third by raising the price of a dress from $34 to $39. By comparison, changing the price from $34 to $44 yielded no difference in demand. Mind Your Pricing Cues, by Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester, Harvard Business Review, September 2003.   ¶ Permalink 11/03/2003 09:53:00 AM