We investigate the effects of a range of different types of anchor on WTP and WTA valuations of familiar consumer products, elicited through individuals’ buying or selling decisions at given prices. We find anchoring effects only when the anchor value is framed as a plausible price for the...

The paper presents an experiment testing the hypothesis that, if consumers’ valuation of a product is shaped by past experiences of prices, it may be more profitable for firms to follow the opposite strategy of pricing higher and then lower. We ran an individual choice experiment with a posted...

We explore the reaction of heterogenous consumers to a range of financial and economic news and find asymmetry in the response to news where consumers react to bad news but not to good news. This asymmetry holds uniformly across heterogeneous consumer groups and is consistent with the popular...

Previous research has demonstrated that people’s concern about their position relative to a reference group (i.e., positional concern) is stronger in some domains than in others. Our survey data reveals that people care more about their relative position in domains where they have to engage in...

Many stated preference studies report framing effects in responses to valuation questions. Framing in stated preference studies occurs when respondents use irrelevant information contained in the question to help them value the good. This may occur because respondents are uncertain or do not...

This article explores how sales package frames (bundle vs. free gift) influence consumers’ cost assignments of target items (focal vs. supplementary) in durable product categories. The frames may influence consumers’ upgrade intentions and decisions as a result of their different perceptions...

Although previous studies of consumer choice have found that common features of alternatives are cancelled and that choices are based only on unique features, a recent study has suggested that common features are canceled only when they are irrelevant in regard to all unique features. The...

Consumers selected round prices and/or sales-totals at greater than chance levels across two different pay-what-you-want situations and one self-pumped gasoline purchase. The differences among these situations suggest that the tendency to select round prices/sales-totals reflects a subjective...

Deciding how much to save for retirement is a difficult task that includes many uncertainties. In this paper, we use data from a representative Dutch household panel to study the impact of uncertainty regarding one’s savings adequacy on retirement savings contributions and information search...

This paper attempts to answer an interesting but empirically challenging question: Do changes in well-being (life satisfaction or happiness) lead to changes in consumption and savings behavior? The paper uses regional sunshine as an instrument for personal happiness using the Dutch Household...