Investigating the effect of external reference prices on consumer price evaluation and purchase decision: A multi-method approach.
(A2022-106622)

AUTHORS

Lilla Lipták, University of Szeged Faculty of Economics and Business Administration; Szabolcs Prónay, University of Szeged Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

ABSTRACT

According to the core principle of behavioral economics consumers frequently apply heuristics when deciding which can lead to biased perceptions and decisions. In our research we aimed to investigate one of these phenomena, namely the effect of external reference prices on consumers’ price evaluation and decision. In order to this first we applied an online experimental survey which has been filled out by 2158 people. To understand our results more, we also had an eye tracking experiment with an interview among 26 participants. Our results show that external reference prices has influence on consumers, but there are other important factors which play role in the decision making process. All in all we can say that external reference prices has greater influence on more price conscious consumers, although these people fixated on average shorter on the presented prices in our experiment.