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This research paper aims to examine the relationships among the factors associated with changing shopping environment, consumer knowledge and reference price.

A self administered online survey was used to collect data (final sample size was 265). After checking for non‐response bias, data was factor analyzed and checked for reliability and validity. Hypotheses were tested using structural Equation Modeling procedure.

Product search opportunity is associated with product and price knowledge. Price volatility is negatively associated with internal reference price. Further, consumers' price comparison propensity and price knowledge positively influence external reference price. Finally, price volatility has a significant negative influence on consumer knowledge and IRP orientation.

The sampling frame is a major limitation, in addition to not including variables such as product type and other measures of price volatility. Future research should expand the sampling frame and include other variables as well as other aspects of price volatility.

These findings provide insights into advertised price claims in the information rich internet age. Managers also benefit from the finding that the internet, particularly price comparison, influences external reference price. Consequently, managers must be cautious with their advertised price claims and not exaggerate the value of offerings or cost savings too much.

This topic is important because retailers extensively use reference price or price comparison to increase consumers' perception of the product value. However, not much research attention has been given to this topic.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the robustness of effects found by Barone et al. that partially comparative pricing enhances consumers' relative price beliefs about its comparatively priced products, but risks adversely affecting these beliefs about the retailer's non‐comparatively priced products.

Research uses an experimental methodology in which the presence or absence of a price comparison is manipulated and the effects on relative price beliefs about non‐comparatively priced products are assessed.

Four studies replicated Barone et al.'s findings that a competitive price comparison enhances consumers' relative price beliefs about comparatively priced products, but did not replicate their findings that these beliefs about the non‐comparatively priced products are affected adversely unless suspicion was induced experimentally. Otherwise, consumer suspicion about the lack of price comparisons, found to be a driver of the adverse effects in Barone et al., did not spontaneously emerge in the current research.

Research examines only university students in a controlled setting devoid of real‐world distractions. Like Barone et al., effects focus on non‐comparatively priced products in categories lacking any price comparison rather than the non‐comparatively priced products residing within the same category as the comparatively priced product. Findings reinforce the value of replication.

The potential risks to retailers of using partially comparative pricing appear far less prevalent than observed previously.

The paper raises questions about the stability of consumer response, particularly those involving consumer suspicion, to pricing tactics.

The uncertainty of consumers' perceived value makes online education enterprises face great challenge in developing the pricing strategy. So the purpose of this paper is to research the pricing strategies of online education products by considering knowledge consumers' characteristics.

Considering consumer matching degree and price comparison, this study establishes the utility functions of consumers in normal sales period and discount selling period. On this basis, the research builds pricing models of the online education enterprise under the strategy of price undertaking and intertemporal pricing strategy. It further discusses the impact of consumer matching degree, consumer price sensitivity and different types of consumers on the product price and profit of online education enterprises, and reveals the optimal pricing strategy of the enterprise.

Consumer matching degree and price sensitivity coefficient have positive effects on product price and enterprise profit, but they have different effects on product demand; there are differences in the perceived value of the three types of consumers, and matching consumers are the optimal consumer group; the intertemporal pricing strategy is better than the strategy of price undertaking only when the price sensitivity coefficient is greater than a critical value.

This study enriches the literature on the pricing model of online education products and owns a practical significance to guide the online enterprise to make marketing strategies to increase profit.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that consumer choice be guided by price fairness judgements to increase consumer satisfaction and subsequently enhance market efficiency. Consumers en masse lack the information to judge price fairness, thereby causing their ability to influence the economy to be overlooked.

This is an argumentative and conceptual work that aims to initiate a debate on this important yet unexplored issue. The arguments presented in the paper are based on economic and technological considerations.

The measure for enabling a consumer price fairness judgement is unit cost information – the cost incurred by a firm to produce a product and/or service. The benefits and challenges stemming from the availability of unit cost information (i.e. cost transparency) to consumers and companies are presented and the likely impact of cost transparency on addressing information asymmetries between buyers and sellers are discussed.

Although a significant body of knowledge exists on issues such as price transparency and how it is driven and enabled by the growth of the Internet, there is little or no evidence of research yet on issues related to cost transparency. The authors believe this work would create a new line of research for scholarly community leading to an impact on practice.

Klaus Schmidbauer presented a paper entitled “On the Price Structure in Consumer Markets: Results of a Secondary Analysis of Price Comparisons of Consumer Durables”. The paper analysed price data on consumer durables collected by the German Institut für angewandte Verbraucherforschung in order to throw some light on two important issues in consumer policy. First, Schmidbauer considered the shape and form of the distributions of prices of given makes and models of consumer durables found in local markets. Inspection of these empirical distributions permitted the author to reach some conclusions about the usefulness of providing price comparison information on a public good basis. Secondly, the variety of different prices on offer in a local market (as measured by the coefficient of variation) was suggested as a measure of local price competition. Simple correlations were found between the number of prices quoted for a model and the range of those prices (positive); the average variability of prices between sellers and the price level in a given local market (negative); and the size of the local market and the price level (negative). Overall these results were taken as confirming the notion that increased price competition is reflected in an increased variation in price.

In response to the impact of market globalization and concerns over the universality of marketing measures, this study seeks to examine the measurement invariance of consumers' price perception scales cross‐culturally with samples drawn from four Eastern Asian countries, i.e. China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). In addition, this study further examines the differences and similarities in the mean levels of consumers' price perceptions across the four samples.

A convenience sample of undergraduate college students was employed. A total of 958 students with business‐related majors completed a questionnaire in Beijing, China; Seoul, South Korea; Tainan, Taiwan; and Chonburi, Thailand.

Having established psychometric properties and demonstrated the partial scalar invariance of measurements and structural parameters, the results indicated that the consumers' price perception scale containing five dimensions (i.e. price‐quality schema, prestige sensitivity, value consciousness, sale proneness, and price mavenism) appears to be useful in Eastern Asian cultures. In addition, results of latent mean comparison revealed not only some similarities but also differences related to the five dimensions of price across the four Eastern Asian samples.

The main limitation is the issue of generalizability of the findings because of the use of student samples.

This study is among the first to examine cross‐cultural invariance of consumers' price perception within Eastern Asian countries using MGCFA.

Mobile shopping emerges, but the marketing factors driving consumers’ mobile shopping lack clarification. Literature gaps also exist to view mobile shopping from a consumer behavior’s perspective. The purpose of this paper therefore is to empirically explore the issue based on the lifestyle perspective, 4Ps marketing theory and the information system (IS) success model.

A survey method was adopted. Data were gathered from consumers who had experience in mobile shopping. The collected data were analyzed with PLS to explore the issues.

The results showed that platform use habit, price comparison preference, shopping independence preference and promotion marketing quality were significantly associated with consumers’ use of mobile shopping apps/websites. They also showed that promotion marketing quality, price marketing quality and product marketing quality were the important marketing factors driving consumers’ user satisfaction of mobile shopping apps/websites. Finally, the results also indicated the importance of both consumers’ use and user satisfaction of mobile shopping apps/websites in arousing their continuous use intention.

The results of the study bridge the gap between the 4Ps marketing theory and the IS success model. They provide a direction for further studies to bridge the marketing theories and the IS theories in exploring the development of mobile commerce.

The results facilitate the management of mobile shopping apps/websites in building and keeping a long-term relationship with consumers through providing good marketing qualities in the core marketing mix. The results also indicate the importance of user satisfaction in branding management and relationship management of mobile shopping apps/websites.

The results showed that price comparison preference and shopping independence preference were significantly associated with consumers’ use of mobile shopping apps/websites due to the convenient access empowered by mobility in shopping services. The results also suggest that with good design in 4Ps marketing qualities of mobile shopping apps/websites, including product, price and promotion, mobile shopping could be a suitable lifestyle satisfying consumers. However, the results also showed that factors driving consumers’ system use and user satisfaction of mobile shopping apps/websites were not the same. Finally, the results validated the significant impact of both system use and user satisfaction in activating consumers’ continuance intention of mobile shopping. They provided a positive link between consumers’ mobile shopping apps/websites use to their keeping the lifestyle of mobile shopping.

The purpose of this study is to find the role of online informediaries on the perspective of price comparison and information aggregator. Specifically, the author wants to explain how the level of product involvement moderates the effect of price dispersion and product information quality on attitude toward product in online informediaries.

The data for this study are obtained from a three‐way factorial experimental research design. Data were collected from 258 college students who have an experience with an online informediary. Combining ANCOVA and regression analysis enables the study of attitude formation and yields encouraging results.

The study finds that high‐involvement consumers focus on systematic cues (e.g. product attributes) in evaluating product quality. However, when they feel that their initial search yields insufficient results, causing them to perceive more product performance risk, they search for additional cues (e.g. price dispersion). Low‐involvement consumers are mainly affected by price dispersion, which is a heuristic cue, and they evaluate the product more favorably under a high (vs low) level of price dispersion.

This paper is one of the first to consider and empirically test a heuristic‐systematic model for attitude toward product in online informediaries. It also uniquely tests the level of price dispersion to discern the important motivating factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the quantity surcharge phenomenon as a conscious pricing policy as well as the resulting consumer awareness and reactions to quantity surcharges.

The approach taken is a comparative analysis of two distinct time periods involving two store audits and two consumer surveys conducted in 1989 and 2007.

The findings indicate that the quantity surcharge incidents recorded in the market in both periods are the result of a conscious pricing policy. At the same time, evidence suggests that the more mature the market becomes, the less frequent and less intense the phenomenon of quantity surcharges becomes. Consumers' attitude and reaction to quantity surcharges are also discussed indicating that the market's evolution has also an effect on consumers.

The paper discusses quantity surcharges as a conscious pricing policy and examines the effect of retail change on the quantity surcharge phenomenon.

Are retail advertisers using price‐featuring tactics effectively? After a review of past findings on the effectiveness of comparative price formats, this study conducted a content analysis of retail newspaper advertising. The study revealed that advertisements for service retailers and service products consistently used the least effective approaches. Nearly half of all the clothing and department store advertising examined used less effective tactics. Other retailers and retail items tended to use the more effective approaches.