Deleted Dollar Signs Spell Bigger Profit

This just in from the terrifying world of neurobiological marketing: The human brain can be fooled into spending more money if you just omit any reference to dollars on your menu. Neuromarketing, a blog "Where Brain Science and Marketing Meet," reports on a Cornell study that looked at three restaurant price display techniques:

• Numerical with Dollar Sign: $12.00
• Numerical without Dollar Sign or Decimals: 12
• Written: twelve dollars

The researchers expected that the written/scripted prices would perform best, but they found that "the guests with the simple numeral prices spent significantly more than the other two groups."

Therefore the trick to selling stuff is get people to forget they're spending money.

Image source: Flickr member cuttlefish under Creative Commons