The Impact of Self-Construal on the Roles of Internal and External Reference Prices in Price Evaluations

• Main Author: CHEN, Cathy Yi
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2006
• Subjects: Marketing; Sales and Merchandising
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/1284; https://acrwebsite.org/volumes/13026/volumes/ap07/AP-07
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Drawing from cross-cultural studies on cognition styles as well as reference price literature, this research investigates the impact of independent versus interdependent self construal on consumers’ use of internal versus external reference prices during price evaluations. Two experiments reveal that internal reference prices may have a larger impact for participants who are primed with an independent (vs. interdependent) self construal, whereas external reference prices may have a larger impact for participants who are primed with an interdependent (vs. independent) self construal. Implications on cross cultural research of cognitive styles as well as on pricing and promotion strategies are discussed.