Assessing Purchase Patterns of Price Conscious Consumers

Alicia Rihn,Hayk Khachatryan,Xuan Wei

doi:10.3390/horticulturae4030013

Abstract

Price greatly influences consumers’ purchasing decisions. Individuals whose decisions are primarily driven by price are said to be ‘price conscious’. To date, studies have focused on defining price consciousness and identifying factors that contribute to price-conscious behavior. However, research using visual attention to assess how price conscious consumers use in-store stimuli is limited. Here, consumers’ purchasing decisions are assessed using a rating-based conjoint analysis paired with eye tracking technology when shopping for ornamental plants. An ordered logit model is employed to understand price conscious consumers’ purchase patterns and choice outcomes. Overall, price conscious consumers are less attentive to price information. Being price conscious tends to reduce purchase likelihood, ceteris paribus. Increasing visual attention to price decreases consumers’ purchase likelihood, which is amplified for price conscious consumers. Price conscious consumers tend to be quicker decision makers than non-price conscious consumers. Results are beneficial to retailers interested in targeting or primarily catering to price conscious consumers.

Highlights

As ornamental plants are often perceived as luxury products as opposed to necessity goods [33], we further hypothesize that there will be a negative relationship between purchase likelihood and price conscious consumers (H2a) and that there will be a negative relationship between purchase likelihood and visual attention to price (H2b)
There is no significant difference in terms of visual attention on price between price-conscious and non-price conscious groups, price conscious consumers tend to be more efficient than non-price conscious consumers when determining their purchase likelihood
Compared to non-price conscious consumers, price conscious consumers spend less time on the price attribute and less time evaluating the products. This may indicate that they are faster decision makers or have preconceived reference points for the various attributes that improve their speed of decision making

Summary

Introduction

Consumers’ level of price consciousness greatly influences their decision making processes and purchasing behaviors [8,9,10]. Prior research primarily focuses on defining price consciousness [7,8,10,11] and identifying key factors that influence these consumers’ shopping behavior [1,5,6]. Price conscious consumers exhibit similar demographic characteristics. They tend to be deal prone [13], and many factors (including income, product involvement, product quality perceptions, upbringing, age, socialization, and cognitive beliefs on saving money) have been shown to influence consumers’ level of price consciousness [11,14,15]

Methods

Results

Conclusion