• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.613-624
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• 2015

This study examined: 1) the effect of store density on perceived crowding 2) the difference of perceived price benefit of sale by store density 3) the effect of perceived price benefit and store density on perceived crowding and 4) the effect of perceived crowding and price benefit on shopping behaviors. Store density and perceived crowding were categorized into social and spatial dimensions. Data were collected with 6 (high, medium, and low social and spatial densities) * 2 (sale and no-sale) between-subjects experimental designs. A total of 395 responses were analyzed. The results revealed that social density affected social crowding, but spatial density had no effect on perceived crowding. Price benefit of sale was not different by store density. The sale itself did not affect perceived crowding. Under the social density situation, perceived price benefit reduced spatial crowding and social crowding showed a positive effect on purchase behavior while spatial crowding had a negative effect. However, the most important effect on purchase behavior was price benefit. The study implies that social density (not spatial density) is important for consumer behavior and retail strategies.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.53-81
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• 2012

Constructing attractive bundle offers depends on more than an understanding of the distribution of consumer preferences. Consumers are also sensitive to the framing of price information in a bundle offer. In classical economic theory, consumers' utility should not change as long as the total price paid stays same. However, even when total prices are identical, consumers' preferences toward a bundle product could be different depending on the format of price presentation and the locus of price discount. A weighted additive model predicts that the impact of a price discount on the overall evaluation of the bundle will be greater when the discount is assigned to the more important product in the bundle(Yadav 1995). Meanwhile, a reference dependent model asserts that it is better to assign a price discount to a tie-in component that has a negative valuation at its current offer price than to a focal product that has a positive valuation at its current offer price(Janiszewski and Cunha 2004). This paper has expanded previous research regarding price discount presentation format, investigating the reasons for mixed results of prior research and presenting new mechanisms for price discount framing effect. Prior research has hypothesized that bundling is used to sell a tie-in component with an offer price above the consumer's reference price plus a focal product of the same offer price with reference price(e.g., Janiszewski and Cunha 2004). However, this study suggests that bundling strategy can be used for increasing product's attractiveness through the synergy between components even when offer prices of bundle components are the same with reference prices. In this context, this study employed various realistic bundle sets with same price between offer price and reference price in the experiment. Hamilton and Srivastava(2008) demonstrated that when evaluating different partitions of the same total price, consumers prefer partitions in which the price of the high-benefit component is higher. This study determined that their mechanism can be applied to price discount presentation formats. This study hypothesized that price discount framing effect depends not on the negative perception of tie-in component with offer price above reference price but rather on the consumers' perceived consumption benefit in bundle product. This research also hypothesized that preference for low-benefit discount mechanism is that perceived consumption benefit reduces price sensitivity. Furthermore, this study investigated how consumers' concern for quality in a price discount--a factor not considered in previous research--influences price discount framing. Yadav(1995)'s experiment used only one magazine bundle of relatively low quality uncertainty and could not show the influence of perceived uncertainty of quality. This study assumed that as perceived uncertainty of quality increases, the price sensitivity mechanism for assigning the discount to low-benefit will increase. Further, this research investigated the moderating effect of uncertainty of quality in price discount framing. The results of the experiment showed that when evaluating different partitions of the same total price and the same amount of discounts, the partition that discounts in the price of low benefit component is preferred to the partition that decreases the price of high benefit component. This implies that price discount framing effect depends on the perceived consumption benefit. The results also demonstrated that consumers are more price sensitive to low benefit component and less price sensitive to high benefit component. Furthermore, the results showed that the influence of price discount presentation format on the evaluation of bundle product varies with the perceived uncertainty of quality in high consumption benefit. As perceived uncertainty of quality gradually increases, the preference for discounts in the price of low consumption benefit decreases. Besides, the results demonstrate that as perceived uncertainty of quality gradually increases, the effect of price sensitivity in consumption benefit also increases. This paper integrated prior research by using a new mechanism of perceived consumption benefit and moderating effect of perceived quality uncertainty, thus providing a clearer explanation for price discount framing effect.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.30-42
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• 2015

This study examined: 1) the effects of fashion luxury product price discounts in social commerce on perceived benefit and purchase intention, and 2) differences in such effects by social commerce trust, brand and design preferences for luxury products as well as social commerce and online luxury product purchase experiences. Three discount rates representing high, mid, and low for a luxury product sold in social commerce were manipulated and tested on female consumers and 486 online responses were analyzed. The results revealed that the price discount affected perceived benefit but did not affect purchase intention. Benefits were highly perceived at high and mid discount rates compared to the low rate. Social commerce trust, brand preference, and design preference affected perceived benefit and purchase intention, but the interaction effect with price discount was observed only in the design preference to perceived benefit. The purchase experience of online luxury products also affected purchase intention. Implications from the results were also discussed.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.55-70
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• 2015

The main objective of this study is to investigate the moderating roles of the competitor's pricing strategy and the degree of consumer's risk-aversion on perceived risk and perceived benefit in responding to price increases and package downsizing. Based on Prospect Theory, several prior researches find that consumers perceive increased price as more loss than package downsizing and perceive package downsizing as more benefit than increased price. We extend these behavioral economics approach using the reference effect of competitor's pricing strategy. We focus on consumer heterogeneity on risk-aversion, measure the degree of consumer's risk-aversion, and divide the consumers into two groups of high levels of risk-aversion vs. low levels of risk-aversion. We find that the firm's pricing strategies of both price increases and package downsizing do not significantly influence the perceived benefit for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. We find that when the firm reduce the package size, relatively high risk-aversion consumers perceived more benefit and had higher purchase intention compared to price increases. We also find that the competitor's pricing strategies do not significantly influence the consumer's response for relatively low risk-aversion consumers. For relatively high risk-aversion consumers, they perceived more loss when the firm has different pricing strategy from the competitor's.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.635-642
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• 2003

The purposes of this study were to explore the consumer attitude toward the retail sales, to examine the relationships between the sale attitude and the price-related variables(i.e., price consciousness, sales proneness, and value consciousness), and to examine the effects of the sale attitude and the price-related variables on the perceived price value during the retail sales. Data were collected from 790 undergraduate students using the two types of questionnaires representing the sale and non-sale situations, and 776 responses were analyzed. Factor analysis of the sale attitude extracted five dimensions including price benefit, limited product assortment, impulse buying, low service quality, and disordered store atmosphere. The price benefit and the impulse buying factors were related with all the 3 price-related variables, and all the sale attitude factors were related with the value consciousness. The price benefit and the impulse buying factors positively affected the perceived price value under the sale situation.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.31-56
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• 2009

As the competition intensifies and the market matures, marketers are more and more concerned with the relationship marketing. Many of the previous researches have pointed out that not all of the consumers are relationship-oriented. But none of the previous research has systematically investigated this issue. This research investigated the relationship among the three concepts: consumers' intrinsic characteristics, perceived importance of relational benefits, and relationship building intention with the salesperson. In this research the perceived importance of relational benefits is treated as mediating variable in the relationship between consumers' intrinsic characteristics and relationship building intention with the salesperson. The conceptual model in this study can be depicted as follows. From the consumers' perspective relational benefits can be defined as "the additional benefits consumers can receive in addition to core services through the long-term relationship with the service provider." And in this study two kinds of relational benefits are adopted by reviewing the previous research: confidence benefits and social benefits. Relational benefit received from the salesperson is very important to predict consumers' relationship building intention with the salesperson. The more relational benefits consumer wants from the salesperson, the more relationship building intention he/she has. From this point two hypotheses are derived as follows. Hypothesis 1: As the perceived importance of confidence benefit from the salesperson increases, the relationship building intention with the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 2: As the perceived importance of social benefit from the salesperson increases, the relationship building intention with the salesperson increases. In this study four individual characteristics(risk taking tendency, variety-seeking tendency, product knowledge, trust orientation) are hypothesized to influence the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson. And three individual characteristics(interpersonal orientation, price consciousness, trust orientation) are hypothesized to influence the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson. These 7 hypotheses are as follows. Hypothesis 3: As the risk taking tendency increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 4: As the variety-seeking tendency increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 5: As the product knowledge increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 6: As the trust orientation increases, the perceived importance of confidence benefits from the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 7: As the interpersonal orientation increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson increases. Hypothesis 8: As the price consciousness increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson decreases. Hypothesis 9: As the trust orientation increases, the perceived importance of social benefits from the salesperson increases. The whole model in this study can be depicted as follows: Data were collected from the 396 consumers who actually trade stocks through the salesperson and were analyzed using structural equation model. The analysis results show that consumers' perceived importance of relational benefits(confidence benefit and social benefit) play the roles of mediating variables in the causal relationship between consumers' inherent characteristics and their relationship building intention with the salesperson. As for the individual characteristics, the influences of variety-seeking tendency, trust orientation, and price consciousness are statistically significant. It was found that variety-seeking tendency has a significant negative effect on the perceived importance of confidence benefit, and that trust orientation has a significant positive effect on the perceived importance of both of confidence and social benefit. Finally it was also found that, on the contrary to the influence direction suggested in the hypothesis, price consciousness has a significant positive effect on the perceived importance of social benefit.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.746-757
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate the internet perceived risk segments in regard to clothing benefits sought, internet shopping attitude, and internet purchase intention. The subjects used for the study were 210 male and 338 female college students. The internet perceived risk consisted of size/defect risk, social psychological risk, privacy risk, delivery risk, and price risk. The clothing benefits sought had impression improvement, fashion, individuality, figure flaws compensation, and comfort factors. The results showed that consumers were segmented by four groups based on internet perceived risk factors : 1) privacy risk group, 2) size risk group. 3) low risk group, and 4) price/social psychological risk group. The four segmented groups differed in regard to clothing benefits sought, internet shopping attitude, and internet purchase intention. For example, in regard to clothing benefits sought, the price/social Psychological risk group sought fashion more than other groups. The low risk group considered figure flaws compensation benefit less important than other groups. Concerning internet shopping attitude, the low risk group had more favorable altitude toward trust, safety, diversity, exchange/return attributes of internet shopping than other groups. The privacy risk group had more favorable attitude toward convenience and price attributes of internet shopping. Regarding internet purchase intention, the low risk group had higher intention to purchase formal, casual, and sportswear. The size risk group had higher intention to purchase fashion accessories. Further group differences and implications of the results were discussed.

• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.25-50
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• 2016

The purpose of the study was to identify dimensions of benefit sought where consumer cross-border online shoppers seek and to examine the effects of the dimensions on expectancy, perceived performance, disconformity and satisfaction with cross-border online shopping. A total of 258 data were gathered and analyzed using SPSS 22.0. The results of the study identified that six dimensions of benefit sought of cross-border online shopping, which were economic-efficiency, convenience, uniqueness, scarcity, superiority and conformity seeking. There were significant effects of economic-efficiency, scarcity and uniqueness seeking on the expectancy, perceived performance, and satisfaction. In addition, consumers were segmented as four clusters classified using benefit sought of cross-border online shopping. The four clusters were labeled as "high interest type", "disinterested type", "unique scarcity type", and "price-first unfussy type". The significant differences were found among the clusters in the research constructs of expectancy and disconfirmation theory. The findings of the study suggested practical and managerial implications.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2011

One of the major reasons for fierce competition among firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Due to such changes in the marketing environment, differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important in the race to gain a competitive advantage. Price discount is one of the popular promotion strategies that most retailers use, especially to increase sales, but offering a price discount does not always lead to the expected result. If marketers apply an identical price-promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in products and consumer preferences, the discounted price itself may make people skeptical about the quality of the product. Moreover, the changes in perceived value may appear differently depending on factors such as consumer involvement. This implies that variables such as the level of consumer involvement, brand loyalty, and external reference prices, in reality, would have different effects on how consumers perceive the value of price discounts. The variables that affect consumers' perceived values and buying decisions are diverse and complicated. Several studies have examined the effects of such variables as external reference price, selling price, and brand on consumers' perceived value of products. Results have not shown consistent patterns. Therefore, we must note that the factors affecting consumers' value perceptions and buying behaviors are diverse and that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what that variable is. This study focused on the level of consumer involvement as a salient variable that supposedly affects the perceived value of a product, willingness to buy, and search intentions. We tried to examine whether a price discount affects the perceived value-such as perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value-in different ways depending on the level of consumer involvement. In addition, we proposed managerial implications that marketers need to consider as a whole, for instance, product attributes, brand loyalty, and involvement and then established a differentiated pricing strategy, case by case, in order to effectively enhance consumers' perceived values. As a result, we found that perceived transaction value positively affects perceived acquisition value and when discounting the price of a high-involvement product enhances the consumer's willingness to buy, but perceived acquisition value does not affect the search intentions significantly. In the case of discounting prices of low-involvement products, on the other hand, the perceived transaction value has a positive effect on the willingness to buy, but the negative effect of perceived acquisition value on the search intentions was not significant. We suppose that people doubt a product's quality because of a declined perceived quality derived from a price discount. Even though the price discount enhanced the transaction value, people eventually increased their level of searching for additional product information. From the results of this study, we suggest that marketers ought to establish an appropriate value-enhancing strategy based on the understanding of which perceived value consumers rely on more when they conduct purchasing behavior because consumers perceive the degree of importance of acquisition value or transaction value differently, depending on their level of involvement.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.247-269
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• 2007

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.