Using Eye-Movement Recording to Examine Price Comparisons
(A2023-114455)

AUTHORS

Marc Vanhuele, HEC Paris; Gilles Laurent, ESSEC Business School; Madhav Arora, ESSEC Business School

ABSTRACT

We examine to what extent we can use eye movement recording to examine how consumers make price comparisons. Applying this methodology to comparisons between prices with a euro and cents part indeed turns out to be quite insightful. Our results invalidate the intuitive assumption that comparisons are made digit by digit, from left to right. We also find little evidence of holistic analog encoding. Instead, encoding appears verbal, in separate chunks for the euro and cents parts. We discuss implications of this finding for the functioning of psychological pricing.