"Extra bacon?" Context Effects in Purchases of Additional Items

Philipp Brunner () and Christian Zihlmann

No 535, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: common and seemingly innocuous practice involves offering optional extraitems during the purchasing process. We study such a market with consumerswhose preferences for the extra are sensitive to the context of the more expensivebase product, making the extra offer appear more attractive than it actually is.The presence of context-sensitive consumers can soften competition in the marketfor the base product, making the base product more expensive than in a standardeconomy. This not only jeopardizes their own surplus but also creates a negativeexternality on the surplus of the other consumers who have standard preferences.

Keywords: ontext effects; Relative Thinking; Salience; Extra items; Additionalproducts and services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 D90 L10 L50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04-29
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/328311/preview/WP_SES_535.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:fri:fribow:fribow00535

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/328311

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland Bd de Pérolles 90, CH-1700 Fribourg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mustapha Obbad ().