Park Eun Young, Jang Jung Min
College of General Education, Kookmin University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Brunel Business School, Brunel University of London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2025 Feb 19;16:1497372. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1497372. eCollection 2025.
This study examines the impact of display locations of regular and sale prices on reference price estimation, drawing on anchoring and adjustment theory and the left-to-right directionality in reading habits. It focuses on how the spatial positioning of the regular price relative to the discount price affects perceived quality and subsequently shapes reference price judgments. Conducted across both offline and online settings using varied product stimuli, three laboratory studies using comparative price advertisements that presented both prices on the same page consistently demonstrate that placing the regular price to the left of the discount price results in higher reference price estimations. The findings also confirmed that perceived product quality mediates the proposed effect. This research offers new insights into how the spatial placement of pricing information significantly affects consumer perception and decision-making, contributing to consumer psychology.
本研究借鉴锚定与调整理论以及阅读习惯中的从左至右方向性，考察常规价格和促销价格的展示位置对参考价格估计的影响。它关注常规价格相对于折扣价格的空间定位如何影响感知质量，并进而塑造参考价格判断。通过在离线和在线环境中使用不同的产品刺激进行的三项实验室研究，使用在同一页面上呈现两种价格的比较价格广告，一致表明将常规价格置于折扣价格左侧会导致更高的参考价格估计。研究结果还证实，感知产品质量介导了所提出的效应。这项研究为定价信息的空间布局如何显著影响消费者认知和决策提供了新的见解，对消费者心理学做出了贡献。
