Credit: Negative Space from Pexels Sometimes the price wasn't missing; its disclosure was just delayed. That's what Minzhe Xu, assistant professor of marketing in Iowa State University's Ivy College of Business, and his fellow researchers noticed when shopping online. A growing number of retailers were asking shoppers to take one more step—add to cart to see price, click to reveal, sign in to view price—before revealing an item's cost. The paper is published in the Journal of Consumer Research . It felt like "a digital speed bump in a world that's more focused on frictionless shopping," Xu said. But was there something bigger going on? "Delays in disclosure can change how people think about the price," he said. Could they also increase profits for retailers? Hiding in plain sight Retailers have long argued about whether prices should be shown immediately or revealed later in the buying process. A prominent idea, Xu said, is that transparency is good, while friction is bad.…