LINYING (SOPHIE) FAN XUENI (SHIRLEY) LI YUWEI JIANG Although marketing offers with flexible price options within a range of two endpoints (i.e., range offers) have been frequently used in various contexts, such as discount ranges, flexible pricing, and deal quotations, our understanding of how consumers react to this pricing strategy is rather limited. The current research suggests that consumers' reaction to range marketing offers may depend on their general sense of scarcity. Eight studies show that reminders of resource scarcity induce a promotion orientation among consumers, which consequently increases consumers' favorability toward range marketing offers. This effect is found to strengthen when the range of the offer becomes wider, and to weaken when the range offer cannot provide a better-than-reference outcome. These findings result in novel theoretical insights about the ways consumers react to range marketing offers. From a managerial perspective, this research offers tactics that companies can use to potentially increase the acceptance and effectiveness of range marketing offers.
This research reveals how a fundamental and pervasive psychological state, feeling powerful, asymmetrically impacts consumers’ construction of and response to communications. For senders, power reduces consumers’ need-for-justification and lowers the degree of support they seek and use to construct their communications. This lowered degree of support is evidenced by reduced information search, the use of fewer rational-based arguments, and a greater reliance on more concise language. In contrast, for receivers, power increases consumers’ expectations for others to justify their positions. As a result, high-power receivers require a greater degree of support in communications from others. Based on a need-for-justification mechanism, the current work derives and demonstrates theoretically driven boundary conditions (e.g., attenuation when a heightened need-for-justification or support already exists) of this relationship. Together, these results provide new insights into how power influences consumers’ need-for-justification and how this need affects the ways that consumers construct and respond to communications.
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