Price-quality heuristic correlation with rates of product consumption

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the manner in which the rate of product consumption contributes to the formation and strengthening of the price-quality heuristic.

Design/methodology/approach

The research included a literature review with a series of tests across a sequence of blind and sighted tasting experiments involving 278 subjects assessing seven differently priced products of orange juice, coffee and wine.

Findings

The paper found evidence that consumption rates do affect the way consumers respond to price information and that sight-based “System 1” judgement errors accrue and increase progressively with consumption. This relationship was observed to be stronger in sight-based product assessments for consumption of four or more units per week compared to those consuming one unit per week. For blind-based product assessments, an inverse relationship between price affect and consumption was observed, with affect reported to be stronger for minimal rates of consumption.

Originality/value

The observation of sight-based and blind-based affect relationships which are dependent on the levels of product consumption appears to be an interesting advancement in consumer behaviour research. This provides support for a dual structure of rationality operated by an interconnection between “System 1” sight-based associations and “System 2” blind-based ponderous thinking. The paper further provides support for Kahneman’s “conflation of intuition” as classically conditioned memory.

Citation

Priilaid, D. and Hall, D. (2016), "Price-quality heuristic correlation with rates of product consumption", British Food Journal, Vol. 118 No. 3, pp. 541-559. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-03-2015-0101