Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Marketing Theory
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Boothe, J.
Right arrow Articles by Chapman, G. B.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Preference reversals resulting from a market value heuristic

Jason Boothe

Rutgers University, USA

Janet A. Schwartz

Rutgers University, USA

Gretchen B. Chapman

Rutgers University, USA

Two studies demonstrated preference reversals using consumer products. Some subjects made a choice between a pair of food or hygiene products while others assigned minimum selling prices to each product. Product pairs were selected such that one item had a high market price but was undesirable (e.g. eggplant roulettes) while the other item had a low market price but was desirable (e.g. a can of soda). As predicted, most subjects choose the low market price/desirable item, but the high market price/undesirable item was assigned a higher minimum selling price. Experiment 1 used a hypothetical questionnaire, while in Experiment 2 responses had real consequences. The results suggest a market value heuristic such that when decision makers are unsure of how to translate their preference into a specific dollar amount they substitute the product's market price for their own preference. The implication of this heuristic is that if merchants consistently set the retail price of a particular product at a certain level, consumers will use that retail price as the basis of their pricing evaluations and will come to value the product at the retail price.

Key Words: choice • market price • preference reversal • selling price

Marketing Theory, Vol. 7, No. 1, 27-38 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1470593107073843
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?