Impacts of product type and representation type on the perception of justice and price fairness

Giuliana Isabella (), José Afonso Mazzon and Angelika Dimoka

Journal of Business Research, 2017, vol. 81, issue C, 203-211

Abstract: Consumers make purchasing decisions every day. This paper investigates perceptions of justice and price unfairness, where the product (hedonic vs. utilitarian) is presented either in a more abstract (verbal) or a more concrete (photo) way in a context of discriminatory pricing—a widely-employed marketing practice. Two experimental studies were completed. Results show an interaction between product and representation types. When consumers pay more than others to purchase utilitarian products that are concretely represented, participants perceive more unfairness when compared to hedonic products. However, when consumers pay more than others to purchase utilitarian products abstractly represented, the perception of unfairness decreased compared to hedonic products. For consumers and practitioners, this study offers important contributions—it presents situations in which a discriminatory price can result in a different perception of injustice or price unfairness to informed consumers. Accordingly, implications of these findings for the literature, consumers, and managers are discussed.

Keywords: Discriminatory price; Hedonic; Utilitarian; Construal level theory; Price unfairness; Perception of justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296317300413
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jbrese:v:81:y:2017:i:c:p:203-211

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.10.031

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().