How social comparison influences reference price formation in a service context

Giampaolo Viglia and Graziano Abrate

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2014, vol. 45, issue C, 168-180

Abstract: What is the influence on reference price when the source of price information is anonymous versus social? This article investigates the formation of reference prices given an observed sequence of past prices in a service context. An experimental study suggests that, considering the same price information, if the source is social (i.e., the prices paid by colleagues), then consumers want to pay less. More specifically, social comparison changes the way individuals weigh information, attributing more importance to the lowest historical prices and to the range in price variations.

Keywords: Reference price; Social comparison; Dynamic pricing; Prelec weighting function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D40 M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487014000750
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:joepsy:v:45:y:2014:i:c:p:168-180

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2014.09.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

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