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This editorial aims to discuss how the modern world is causing pricing practices of both retailers and consumers to evolve. The contributions of seven papers included in this special issue have been highlighted.

The purpose is to explore how different cues impact consumer reactions to prices.

These cues include both cues regarding the price itself (e.g. the level of the discount, how the price is broken into component parts, the starting price in an auction), as well as non-price-related cues (e.g. private labels, brand familiarly, consumer ratings, creativity of an ad). In addition, this special issue includes a review article which provides a comprehensive review of behavioral pricing research.

The contributions of seven papers included in this special issue have been highlighted.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising creativity on consumer perceptions of product quality, value, retailer brand attitude and purchase intention.

Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 shows the impact of creativity (high/low) for two product categories (mineral water and chewing gum) and one known retailer. The findings are replicated and extended in Study 2 for four categories (mineral water, chewing gum, batteries and detergent) and two known retailers.

The results show that advertising creativity positively signals perceived product quality, which increases perceived value. These effects fully mediate a positive impact on retailer brand attitude and purchase intentions. The positive effect of advertising creativity on perceived product quality is mediated by perceived advertisement effort.

This study introduces advertising creativity as a way for retailers to increase perceived product quality and value. The results show that advertising creativity increases perceived effort on behalf of the sender, which positively influences purchase intentions.

The current study shows that advertising creativity can work as a signal of product quality, which has positive effects for retailers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of behavioral pricing research, including the identification of the primary areas studied and a summary of the core findings in each based on previous literature.

This research examines 613 articles on the ISI Web of Science database and focuses on marketing journals that discuss behavioral pricing. The reviews of these articles use traditional literature review and research profiling methods.

The main subareas in behavioral pricing this study identifies are the price–quality relationship, reference price, price awareness, price elasticity estimation and price fairness. In general, the behavioral pricing field is relatively new, and all subareas would benefit from additional research.

For pricing researchers, this study offers integrative insights into the field based on previous literature and identifies the main contribution and main topic of each. The study also offers suggestions for new research ideas.

This paper aims to investigate the presence of varying price points on the impact of product valuations in both English and reverse auctions on potential bidders, that is, those not yet engaged in the auction. Internet auctions, both English style and reverse, constitute one of the success stories of digital commerce.

As its method of research, this paper uses an experimental approach to explore the effects of multiple reference prices.

While previous research has done well to show that a lower initial price decreases barriers to entry and can lead to a higher final price in English-style auctions, this research shows that such a strategy may harm potential bidders’ product perceptions due to multiple reference prices. The authors explore situations of multiple reference prices in the context of reverse auctions, where both higher and lower reference prices are shown to be able to increase product valuations.

Additional research of a variety of products and using a representative sample would enhance the findings of this paper.

The findings show that reference prices have differing impacts, which are dependent upon the goal of either maximizing or minimizing the distance between the initial price and the price consumers are willing to pay in an online auction.

The investigation links differing goals created by the type of auction to the potential impact of the reference price. In addition, we explore the effects of multiple reference prices on consumer valuations.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the differences between price partitioning and drip pricing with regard to their influence on price recall, purchase intentions and fairness perceptions. In many industries, sellers advertise low prices and reveal other surcharges sequentially as the customer goes through the buying process. To date, little is known about how these sequential, or drip-pricing, techniques influence consumer behavior.

The study is based on an experimental between-subjects design (N = 95) with two groups. The data collection was conducted with a mixed scenario/stimuli-based online survey for a virtual travel agent.

The findings reveal that underestimation of the total price of an offering is significantly weaker when prices are presented sequentially rather than partitioned. In addition to reduced purchase intentions, drip pricing may negatively affect fairness perceptions when consumers feel deceived by the seller.

The study replicates findings of previous research on price partitioning but is one of the first empirical studies to examine the influence of sequence in price presentations. With this focus, the study opens up new avenues for pricing research.

This article aims to close some research gaps by differentiating between brand types and price tiers. Many consumers perceive high prices as signals of high quality, yet researchers tend to find only low average correlations between price and objective quality. Previous studies do not account for market shares and paid prices though.

A German consumer panel with more than 30,000 households reveals market shares and paid prices. Combining these data with product test ratings, the authors evaluate price-quality relationships with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients and distinguish food from non-food products, national brands and private labels and three price tiers.

High price-quality correlations for national brands and non-food private labels indicate that a higher price signals greater product quality. For food private labels, negative correlation coefficients inhibit the use of price as a quality indicator. The price-quality relationship for food private labels implies strong competition among brand owners, based on the price and quality of their products.

This article investigates price-quality correlations by accounting for paid prices and product market shares; it also reveals differences across food and non-food products, national brands and private labels and different price tiers against the background of competition strategies. By addressing when consumers use price as a quality indicator, it outlines important managerial implications for manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

This paper aims to examine how two non-price cues – consumer rating and number of purchased social coupons (SCs) – serve as risk-relievers for high and low variety-seekers and subsequently impact their purchase decision for SCs offered by unfamiliar brands.

Participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk online panels participated in three scenario-based experiments.

Low (vs high) variety-seekers perceive greater risk and indicate lower likelihood of purchasing SCs offered by unfamiliar brands. Both high and low variety-seekers utilize the two non-priced cues – consumer rating and number of purchased SCs – as risk-relievers sequentially. That is, consumer rating constantly has a substantial impact on purchase likelihood for such SCs, whereas number of purchased SCs is influential only when consumer rating becomes ambiguous. Specifically, low (vs high) variety-seekers have a greater tendency to rely on number of purchased SCs in addition to consumer rating as a risk-reliever.

This paper examines cue utilization process in the SC context and suggests that high and low variety-seekers respond to the two non-price cues differently and sequentially. This provides theoretical insights on consumers’ cue utilization process and managerial insights regarding how managers could strategically handle the cues on SC provider websites. Further, this paper identifies situations where high variety-seekers may not prefer unfamiliar experiences and low variety-seekers may become more likely to embrace unfamiliar experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the signaling effects of high versus low price discounts by integrating extant literature on price discounts, perceived risks and purchase intentions for products sold online. The study examines the influence of price discounts on perceived risks, and the subsequent influence of these risk perceptions on online purchase intentions.

This study used an experimental design. The manipulated factor was price discount (10, 30, 50, 70 and 90 per cent). Responses were collected via online surveys. Nonlinear regression analysis with the MEDCURVE macro was used for the analysis.

The results show that the discount size increases customers’ perceived risks, and that these perceived risks mediate the relationship between price discount and purchase intentions.

This study provides a better understanding of customers’ risk perceptions for online price discounts, which enables retailers to decide appropriate price discounts to attract customers.

Most previous literature focusing on price discounts takes into consideration the presentation effect on consumers’ positive perceptions, while this study investigates the price discount effect on customers’ negative perceptions. In particular, this study examines the mediating effect of perceived risks on the relationship between price discount and purchase intention, which has not been investigated in previous studies.

This study aims to discern emerging trends and provide a longitudinal perspective on merchandising research by identifying relationships between merchandising-related subdomains/themes.

This study sourced 657 merchandising-related articles published since 1960, from the Scopus database and 425 from Web of Science. After processing and normalizing the data, this study performed co-word and thematic network analyses. Taking a text mining approach, this study used topic modeling to identify a set of coherent topics characterized by the keywords of the articles.

This study identified the following merchandising-related themes: branding, retail, consumer, behavior, modeling, textile and clothing industry and visual merchandising. Although visual merchandising was the first type of merchandising to be used in-store, only recently has it become an emerging topic in the academic literature. There has been a further trend over the past decade to understand the adoption of simulation technology, such as computer-aided design, particularly in supply chain management in the clothing industry. These and other findings contribute to the discussion of the merchandising concept, approached from an evolutionary perspective.

The conclusions of this study hold implications at the intersection of merchandising, sectors, new technologies, research methodologies and merchandising-practitioner education. Research trends suggest that, in the future, virtual reality and augmented reality using neuroscientific methods will be applied to the e-merchandising context.

The different dimensions of merchandising can be used to leverage store managers’ decision-making process toward an integrated store-management strategy. In particular, by adopting loyalty merchandising tactics, the store can generate emotional attachment among consumers, who will perceive its value and services as unique, thanks to merchandising items designed specifically with that aim in mind. The stimulation of unplanned purchases, the strategic location of products and duration of each merchandising activity in the store, the digitalization of merchandising and the application of findings from neuroscience studies are some of the most relevant practical applications.

This study provides the first-ever longitudinal review of the state of the art in merchandising research, taking a holistic perspective of this field of knowledge spanning a 60-year period. The work makes a valuable contribution to the development of the marketing discipline.

Most previous studies have indicated promotional attributes separately (e.g. time pressure, giveaways, price discounts, exclusivity) and found controversial effects. This paper aims to explore how different attributes can be aligned with each other and integrated with different levels of brand strength to influence sales or purchase intention according to the fit logic.

Both field data and controlled experiments are used to understand the effectiveness of promotion configurations. This paper first conducts an exploratory study using qualitative comparative analysis, based on 625 online promotion campaigns. This paper identifies several effective configurations of promotion attributes, leading to the development of two hypotheses. Three experiments are then designed to test the validity of these two hypotheses.

The results show that strong brands should adopt nonmonetary promotion, whereas weak brands should adopt monetary promotion; exclusivity and time limitation should be used separately.

This paper provides empirical insights on how promotion elicits sales in terms of the configuration of promotional attributes and brand strength. This paper examines the integrative effect of types of giveaways, promotion duration and promotion target as well as brand strength on promotion effectiveness. Future research can explore other promotional attributes. This study is a first attempt to introduce and apply the set-theoretic approach to address strategic research issues and inform strategic decisions and managerial actions.

The findings can facilitate marketers’ understanding and predictions of deal recipients’ responses to promotions.

This paper adopts a holistic view to investigate how different promotion attributes interact with one another to stimulate sales. It explores the integrative effect from field data and finds converging evidence through a set-theoretic approach and controlled experiments.