Internal reference price response across store formats
研究了同一消费者在折扣店和超市两种业态下对内部参考价格的反应差异，发现消费者在折扣店表现为损失厌恶，在超市则表现为收益寻求，并将差异归因于商店的价格形象。
Reference price models have a long tradition in marketing and consumer research. Pricing strategies can utilize consumer response to gains and losses relative to internal reference prices, which are price expectations developed from past-observed prices. Consequently, many previous studies have been devoted to analyzing differences in internal reference price response across product categories and consumer characteristics. However, knowledge about internal reference price response across different store formats is missing. Our study aims to fill this research gap. To do so, we estimate a reference price model for the same set of brands and the same sample of consumers across two store formats (discount chain vs. supermarket chain). The prices for the brands in our model are similar across store formats. Results from our proposed model show that the same consumers are loss-averse at the discount chain while gain-seeking at the supermarket chain. Predicted by previous literature, we attribute the difference in internal reference price response to the different price image of the store formats. Overall, our research contributes to the reference price literature and provides important implications for pricing strategies at stores with different price image.