Psychological Effects of Communicating Temporal Best Prices

Ruud Lathouwers (), Christoph Kogler and Marcel Zeelenberg
Additional contact information
Ruud Lathouwers: Department of Social Psychology, and Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER), Tilburg University
Christoph Kogler: Department of Social Psychology, and Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER), Tilburg University
Marcel Zeelenberg: Department of Social Psychology, and Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research (TIBER), Tilburg University

Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, 2024, vol. 8, issue S1, 30-32

Abstract: When products or services are on discount, it is not always clear to consumers for what price these were sold before. To protect consumers, the European Union’s Omnibus Directive called for more transparency in discounts. In reaction to this, some companies started communicating what we call Temporal Best Prices (TBPs). TBPs indicate what the lowest price was in the last 30 days before the current discounted price. We manipulated whether the TBP was absent (control condition), lower than, equal to, or higher than the current discount for two products. When participants missed out on a better deal (TBPs were lower than the current discount), willingness to buy and perceptions of fairness were lower. Contrary to our expectations, when participants got a particularly good deal the willingness to buy and perceptions of fairness were unaffected. Perceptions of transparency were not affected by the manipulation of TBPs. In conclusion, historical price information in the form of TBPs seems to asymmetrically affect purchase intentions and fairness perceptions.

Keywords: consumer attitudes and behavior; temporal best price; willingness to buy; transparency; fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://sabeconomics.org/journal/RePEc/beh/JBEPv1/articles/JBEP-8-S1-2.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:beh:jbepv1:v:8:y:2024:i:s1:p:30-32

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy is currently edited by Michelle Baddeley

More articles in Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy from Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SABE ().