#JustCurious: Why are gas prices posted to the 1000th of a dollar?
Why gas prices are now posted to the one-thousandth of a cent is the subject of this week’s #JustCurious.
The Canadian Fuel Association shared some background with us.
For years, when prices were below a dollar a litre, prices were posted to the one-hundredth of a dollar.
You may remember a posted price of, say, 59.9c/l a few years back. Okay, a lot of years back. The CFA says that posted price was more appealing to customers than 60 cents per litre flat on a sign.
The CFA says once gas prices eclipsed the dollar per litre mark, there was suddenly an issue of what to do.
This happened at about the same time that most stations changed to digital sign posts from the old analog ones.
The CFA says marketers eventually opted to keep the additional decimal point both for transparency of the gas price breakdown and because it appealed to customers in the same way as it did prior to eclipsing the dollar mark. Short answer: Marketing.
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