Low‐price guarantees as advertisement strategy and compensation policy: The more,the better?

Companies sometimes employ a “lowest price or more than the difference back” policy (i.e., a price‐beating guarantee). We investigated whether such a policy is more effective to attract and retain customers than when the exact price difference is promised (i.e., a price‐matching guarantee). The first study revealed that about 60% of the marketers and shop owners in our sample thought that beating price differences is a more effective strategy than matching price differences. However, the four subsequent studies challenged this assumption. Specifically, the advertisement as well as the provision of price‐beating refunds did not have an incremental positive effect on customers' general attitudes in terms of trust, brand perception, loyalty, and shopping intentions beyond the level that was already reached by price‐matching refunds. Moreover, our mediation analyses revealed that the null effect of price‐matching versus price‐beating was mediated by fairness perceptions. From a theoretical perspective, these results are in line with a fairness account, which holds that people do not only evaluate the economic value of an outcome, but also take equality considerations into account. Because price‐beating is literally more expensive than price‐matching, from a practical point of view, companies should be informed that the employment of a price‐beating guarantee is a cost‐ineffective advertisement strategy and compensation policy.     

Explanations determine the impact of information on financial investment judgments

Previous research has shown that some types of judgments are influenced by the results of an explanation‐seeking comprehension process. The present experiments investigated novice investors' stock price forecasts and investment decisions. Information presented in a narrative story order was hypothesized to promote the construction of a coherent mental representation that would affect how information was interpreted and subsequently used to predict stock price changes. The results showed that outcome information had a distinctively high impact, but only when the information was read in story order. These results imply that presentation order affects the mental representation of evidence relevant to the forecast, and the form of that mental representation moderates the impact of individual pieces of information on the ultimate judgment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

医疗服务价格调整与医疗费用控制的关系研究

因政府、社会和病人无法承受越来越高的医疗费用,以致于控制医疗费用已成为我国卫生政策的核心。现代医院应将医疗服务价格调整作为切入点,降低医疗成本,用比较低廉的费用提供比较优质的医疗服务。     

The effects of differing response types and price manipulations on demand measures

Animals' behavioral needs have become an important component of animal welfare legislation. Behavioral economics provides a framework for the study of such needs. A function, analogous to a demand function relating consumption rate to price, can be obtained by increasing the price (or work) required for access to a commodity. This experiment investigated the effects of different response types and price manipulations on these functions. Six hens pushed a door or pecked a key for food under open economic conditions (short experimental sessions and supplementary food). In Part 1, the number of door pushes required (fixed-ratio schedule) was increased each session, and the force needed to push the door was increased across conditions. In Part 2, the force needed to push the door was increased session to session, and the fixed-ratio schedule was increased across conditions. In Part 3, the number of key pecks required was increased each session. Both response types produced similarly shaped (approximately linear in logarithmic coordinates and downward sloping) demand functions when price was increased by increasing the number of responses required. These imply an elastic demand for food under these conditions. In contrast, increasing the force required to push the door resulted in highly curvilinear functions. These functions indicated little change in consumption across lower door forces and abrupt drops in consumption at higher force requirements, implying mixed elasticity in the animals' demand for food. The differences between the shapes of the two functions seem to arise from the different ways that the two price manipulations alter the time taken to complete the work required. Increasing the fixed-ratio requirement necessarily increases the time needed to complete each response unit, whereas increasing the force requirement does not. The different shapes of the functions were robust when either force or number was varied across sessions and the value of the other was varied over conditions. They were also robust when the price increases were taken from different conditions, showing that the shapes of the functions were independent of the place in the experiment in which the price was examined. Unit price (which combines number and force into a single price measure) unified the data from the two price manipulations to a large degree, producing moderately curved functions. However, there was some variance around the unit price functions, and this was attributable to the different shapes of the underlying functions. The data suggest that different price manipulations may give different measures of animal demand but that unit price might provide some unification.     

医疗机构单病种限价面面观

单病种限价收费是医院经营的一种管理模式,是指在临床诊疗收费中,对单一病种病人限定最高费用的做法,是医院的一种自发行为。这在一定程度上解决了群众看病难、看病贵的问题,缓解了社会医疗费用过度增长的压力,有助于医疗机构收费更趋于合理化。拟从社会的各个层面对医疗机构单病种限价问题进行深入地探讨。     

True Context‐dependent Preferences? The Causes of Market‐dependent Valuations

A central assumption of neoclassical economics is that reservation prices for familiar products express people's true preferences for these products; that is, they represent the total benefit that a good confers to the consumers and are, thus, independent of actual prices in the market. Nevertheless, a vast amount of research has shown that valuations can be sensitive to other salient prices, particularly when individuals are explicitly anchored on them. In this paper, the authors extend previous research on single‐price anchoring and study the sensitivity of valuations to the distribution of prices found for a product in the market. In addition, they examine its possible causes. They find that market‐dependent valuations cannot be fully explained by rational inferences consumers draw about a product's value and are unlikely to be fully explained by true market‐dependent preferences. Rather, the market dependence of valuations likely reflects consumers' focus on something other than the total benefit that the product confers to them. Furthermore, this paper shows that market‐dependent valuations persist when – as in many real‐life settings – individuals make repeated purchase decisions over time and infer the distribution of the product's prices from their market experience. Finally, the authors consider the implications of their findings for marketers and consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Package size and perceived quality: The intervening role of unit price perceptions

This research examines how package size can influence quality judgments for packaged goods, and also identifies a price-based mechanism for the observed size–quality relationship. Results from several studies show that a product in a smaller package is rated more favorably than the equivalent product in a larger package. Further, this effect is due to the smaller package being associated with a higher unit price (despite having a lower overall price), which suggests that unit price information is more diagnostic than overall price information when forming judgments of product quality. We also find a theoretically-derived reversal of this effect under conditions in which the greater diagnosticity of unit price is overwhelmed by its lower ease of use. Namely, when overall price is the only explicitly-provided price cue and consumers are too distracted to estimate unit price, a larger package is now rated as being better. Finally, two concluding studies examine the downstream consequences of changes in package size, building off our basic conceptualization to document effects on product choice as well as consumption experience.     

The effect of deal exclusivity on consumer response to targeted price promotions: A social identification perspective

Discounts offered selectively to consumers are commonplace in the market and reflect the assumption that individuals will respond positively to targeted discounts. We consider whether exclusive deals evoke more positive responses than inclusive offers, an outcome referred to as a deal exclusivity effect. Contrary to the intuition that targeted promotions will always be evaluated more favorably than inclusive offers, we show that deal exclusivity effects (1) can be attenuated based upon factors influencing the extent to which recipients identify with other deal recipients and (2) are mediated by the offer's ability to enable the recipient to engage in self-enhancement.     

公平与惩罚价格对第三方惩罚需求的影响

为了探讨第三方惩罚的影响因素,分析个体在不同公平情境下面临不同的惩罚成本时会采取怎样的第三方惩罚行为,本研究以171名大学生为被试,采用2×2的混合实验设计,通过设置高低两种不公平情境和3种惩罚价格,对被试的第三方惩罚需求进行实验研究。结果显示,个体的第三方惩罚需求都有随着惩罚价格的升高而降低的趋势;不公平程度显著影响第三方惩罚需求。研究表明,惩罚成本显著影响个体的第三方惩罚的实施;在低不公平情境中,被试面对不同惩罚成本时其第三方惩罚行为之间无显著差异,即各种惩罚成本下出现第三方惩罚行为的可能性均较小;而在高不公平情境中,被试面对不同惩罚成本时的第三方惩罚行为之间差异显著,惩罚成本越低出现第三方惩罚的可能性越大。     

从消费者剩余理论看最新医改

从消费者剩余理论来看,患者有医疗消费才会有“剩余”,合理的医疗消费才会增加患者的“剩余”,医疗价格和费用的控制仍然是这次医疗改革成败的关键,因为这是消费者到底是否有“剩余”的关键。医改的首要目标应当是真正让利于群众,即使群众有医疗消费“剩余”,控制医疗价格和费用应当有可操作性指标,医改方案应当有一些消费者“剩余”方面的指标。