Effect of Product Involvement and Brand Preference on Consumers' Evaluation Effort for Multi-Dimensional Prices

소비자의 다차원가격 평가노력에 대한 제품관여도와 브랜드선호도의 영향

Purpose - Multi-dimensional prices comprise multiple components such as monthly payments and a number of payments rather than a single lump-sum amount. According to previous studies, an increase in the number of price dimensions leads to a massive amount of cognitive stress resulting in incorrect calculation, and deterioration in the consistency of the price judgment. However, an increase only in the level of complexity of calculating multi-dimensional prices does not always result in a corresponding decrease in the accuracy of price evaluation. Since diverse variables could affect consumers' purchase-decision-making process, the results of price evaluation would be different. In this study, an empirical analysis was performed to determine how the accuracy of price evaluation varies depending on the extent of the complexity of price dimensions using product involvement and brand preference as moderating variables. Research design, data, and methodology - A survey was conducted on 260 students, and 252 effective responses were used for analysis. The data was analyzed using t-test, one-way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA. In this study, six hypotheses were developed to examine the effect of product involvement and brand preference on consumers' evaluation effort of multi-dimensional prices. Results - As the number of price dimensions increased, accuracy of price evaluation appeared to be low in high involvement, as expected. However, it showed no differences in price evaluation effort when the level of complexity of calculating multi-dimensional prices is low. When a small number of price dimensions are presented in both cases of high and low involvement, accuracy of price evaluation is much higher in a weak brand preference. On the contrary, a strong brand preference enhances an accuracy of price evaluation only in case of low involvement when the number of price dimensions is increased. An interaction effect of product involvement and brand preference on consumers' evaluation of multi-dimensional prices did not exist irrespective of the level of complexity of calculating prices being high or low. Conclusions - When the number of price dimensions is small, consumers' effort for price evaluation shows almost no difference without the moderating effect of involvement, and a weak brand preference leads to a higher accuracy of price evaluation in an effort to make the best selection. No interaction effect of product involvement and brand preference was found except for a main effect of brand preference. When a price is composed of multiple dimensions rendering it more difficult to calculate the final price, the effort for price evaluation was expected to decrease only slightly in case of combination of high involvement and strong brand preference. This is because people have a higher purchase intentions and trust for that particular brand. However, the accuracy of price evaluation was much lower in cases of high involvement, and there was no interaction effect between product involvement and brand preference except for a main effect of involvement and brand preference, respectively.