I guess that is fair: How the efforts of other customers influence buyer price fairness perceptions

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that consumers' price fairness judgments are influenced by comparisons between the offer price they receive and the prices paid by other consumers for the same product offering. In today's digital age, reference points for purchases are more prevalent than ever. However, investigations on how certain inputs of the transaction affect these judgments is lacking. Specifically, extant research has failed to account for how the purchase efforts of other consumers can influence one's own price fairness evaluations. Moreover, relatively little empirical research has endeavored to understand the simultaneous cognitive and affective processes that explain how consumers arrive at price fairness judgments. To address these gaps in the literature, we introduce two studies aimed at understanding the process through which the salient efforts of referent consumers serve to mitigate perceptions of price unfairness when two customers pay different prices for the same product. The findings support a dual‐process model whereby the efforts of other (referent) customers serve to simultaneously reduce buyer anger and increase buyer understanding of the price disparity, ultimately mitigating perceptions of price unfairness.

Regret and nonredemption of daily deals: Individual differences and contextual influences

“…The findings here contribute to the literature on the aforementioned topics as well as on regret. Furthermore, they add to the work on price perceptions and how there is a social element to the perception of buyer price deal fairness (Lastner et al, ). Another area it adds to is how consumers react to companies and their negative events (Meyer, Huber, & Huber, ).…”

“…Price‐consciousness entails a consumer's unwillingness to pay a higher price in exchange for a product and/or a focus the consumer has on paying low prices (Lichtenstein, Ridgway, & Netemeyer, ; Sen & Block, ; Sinha & Batra, ). It is related to price fairness (Lastner, Fennell, Folse, Rice, & Porter, ).…”

“…Such an inability to redeem the coupons frequently can also lead to the development of negative attitudes of consumers eventually as they believe they cannot keep up with the time limit of the coupon validity. (Lastner et al, 2019). Another area it adds to is how consumers react to companies and their negative events (Meyer, Huber, & Huber, 2019).…”

Does it really hurt? Making sense of varieties of anger

“…Anger has been a popular variable in marketing research (Antonetti, 2016; Lastner, Fennell, Folse, Rice, & Porter III, 2019; Xie & Bagozzi, 2019). Consumer research has examined anger to explain consumer revenge following brand failures (Grégoire et al, 2010; Joireman et al, 2013; Joireman, Grégoire, & Tripp, 2016).…”

How Price Dispersion Influences Intention to Join Online Group Buying: The Role of Perceived Price Fairness

“…To make a decision whether to join the online groupbuying, consumers are very likely to search information, such as, online prices, offline shops' prices, group-buying prices, as well as the prices oneself or others have got in the past. Consumers' price acceptability will be affected by perceived price fairness (Martins and Monroe,1994;Lastner et al, 2019).…”