Research of IT influence on the price perception

Abstract

Introduction. The study contributes to the theoretical knowledge by expanding understanding of auditory encoding of prices, further testing the working memory capacities, and understanding the psychological underpinnings of price perceptions. From a managerial perspective, our findings will help marketers to better understand the cognitive processes of price perception while voice-ordering through smart devices, thus improving company pricing decisions and increasing number of sales.
 Aim and tasks. In this study, we aim to understand the psychological underpinnings of price perception during “auditory” price information encoding. In particular, we research how the price pronunciation order of the item on sale (first the sale price and then the usual price or vice versa) affects the sale evaluation and subsequent purchase intention.
 Results. Prior to making predictions about price perception through auditory sense and its subsequent evaluation, we need to understand the cognitive processes underlying numbers encoding. Numerical cognition process follows five stages: (1) initial exposure to numerical information (i.e., numerical presentation in visual or verbal format), (2) numerical information encoding, (3) representation of the numerical information in memory, (4) retrieval of that information in order to perform some cognitive task (e.g. price evaluation), and (5) consumer response based on processed information. Thus, the internal consistency reliability of the questions has already been tested using Cronbach’s alpha parameter and has been proved to be of the appropriate level. Lastly, in addition to these context-related questions, we include two attention checks questions and the question on the questionnaire purpose in order to control for random box-checking and exclude responses which guessed the study reasons from further analysis.
 Conclusions. From a theoretical standpoint, this study contributes to two literature streams: (1) marketing literature on pricing and (2) the psychological literature on numerical cognition. In the pricing area, the findings of the study further support and shed light on the application of the anchoring effect during purchase decisions. The study taps into the area of conscious and unconscious comparisons with price anchors and helps to reconcile previous researches who found different effects of price anchors on willingness to pay for the product or service. In addition, the study provides novel insights regarding pricing decisions in “auditory” rather than “visual” domain, laying a foundation for further exploration of this area.