• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.65-94
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• 2008

This study examines the generalizability of the existing research in an on-line auction situation which suggests that there exist a gap between buyer's willing-to-pay price(WTP) and seller's willing-to-sell price(WTS) about the same product due to the endowment effect and consumers' loss aversion propensity. At the same time, this study also identifies and examines the potential moderating factors for the effect such as product type and consumer's goal orientation based on existing theories about consumers' gain-loss heuristics. The results show that WTS is consistently higher than WTP, and that such gap gets more pronounced when the target product is hedonic vs. utilitarian and when consumers have prevention goals vs. promotion goals. Lastly, limitations and managerial implications of this study is discussed.