Evaluating consumer price perception: a mental accounting and frame dependent perspective

H Social Sciences (General)

Agbato, Oluwadamilola Motunrayo ; Kovalenkov, Alexander

University:University of Glasgow

Department:Adam Smith Business School

关键词: heuristic, reference price, price framing, reference points, mental accounting,prospect theory.;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7563/1/2016Agbatophd.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

In this thesis, we evaluate consumer purchase behaviour from the perspective of heuristicdecision making. Heuristic decision processes are quick and easy mental shortcuts, adoptedby individuals to reduce the amount of time spent in decision making. In particular, weexamine those heuristics which are caused by framing – prospect theory and mentalaccounting, and examine these within price related decision scenarios. The impact of priceframing on consumer behaviour has been studied under the broad umbrella of referenceprice, which suggests that decision makers use reference points as standards of comparisonwhen making a purchase decision. We investigate four reference points - a retailer's pastprices, a competitor's current prices, a competitor's past prices, and consumers' expectationof immediate future price changes, to further our understanding of the impact of priceframing on mental accounting, and in turn, contribute to the growing body of referenceprice literature in Marketing research. We carry out experiments in which levels of priceframe and monetary outcomes are manipulated in repeated measures analysis of variance(ANOVA). Our results show that where these reference points are clearly specified indecision problems, price framing significantly affects consumers' perceptions of monetarygains derived through discounts, and leads to reversals in consumer preferences. We alsofound that monetary losses were not sensitive to price frame manipulations.