Methods to Defer Showing Product Price

Question

It is possible, with a stock Magento, to have the system hide a price from users until the product's been added to a cart?

If this isn't possible with stock Magento, is there known science for accomplishing this? ("known science" meaning third party extensions, proven and tested customization routes, etc)

Bonus Question: Does this (increasingly common) tactic have a name in the ecommerce industry? (Googling has proven difficult since I don't know what to call this)

Answer 1

The "hidden price" is to get around MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policies, specifically with companies that enforce them - Bose, Apple, Monster, Beats Audio, etc.

From Wikipedia on MAP policies:

Minimum advertised price or MAP (also known as resale price maintenance, or RPM) is the practice of a manufacturer providing marketing funds to a retailer contingent on the retailer advertising an end customer price at or above a specified level. Such agreements can be illegal in some countries when members and terms in the agreement match predefined legal criteria.

For Magento - this is available natively in Magento Go:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/minimum-advertised-price/

Aheadworks has a Magento Connect module for this:

http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/magento-extensions/minimum-advertised-price.html

Edit:

Magento Enterprise Edition has built-in MAP support:

In product detail admin:

In configuration settings System > Config > Sales:

Thanks to @davidalger for pointing this out.