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The purpose of this article is to investigate whether involved consumers utilize the same set of reference prices to evaluate an offer as compared to those who are less involved. Additionally, this study aims to investigate whether the processes employed in the two groups are different.

A total of 200 students were enrolled to participate in a realistic shopping experience over a two‐week period. In the course of the study, subjects were asked to provide information on their reference prices. They were also asked to evaluate an advertised offer for a pair of jeans. The data were analyzed using a structural equations methodology.

Under high involvement, consumers utilize perceived normal price, an external market‐based reference price, to adjust their internal standards, which in turn is used to evaluate retail price. In contrast, low‐involvement consumers do not use their internal standards. Rather, they evaluate retail prices directly against external market‐based references.

Despite decades of research on the role of reference prices, the moderating role of involvement on reference price utilization has not been researched adequately. The findings reported here add to existing knowledge in the field and shed additional light on the process by which consumers evaluate posted prices. The findings also emphasize the need to segment the market on the basis of reference price utilization and to design appropriate communication strategies for each.

While there has been much debate in the reference pricing literature on the most appropriate conceptualization of internal reference price used by consumers in evaluating deals, the question of whether consumers may use different internal reference prices at different stages of the purchase process has not been addressed. In this article, we hypothesize that consumers may use one type of internal reference price to form their deal attitude and another to determine their purchase intentions. We also show that different dimensions of internal reference price are used to determine deal attitude and purchase intention and that price uncertainty moderates the relationship between these internal reference prices and deal evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.

This paper conducts a field study of Air Greenland and its internal and external customers based on strong structuration theory (Stones, 2005). The authors employ context and conduct analysis to analyze how fairness evaluations emerge across four levels of structuration.

The paper finds that fairness evaluations emerge as a result of the interaction between external institutional pressures, agents' internal structures, and situated reflection and outcomes. The construction of fairness evaluations was embedded in contradictory institutional structures, where groups of actors constructed different evaluations of fair profits, procedures and prices. Actors furthermore worked on changing position-practice relations which shifted relations, external structures and affected outcomes and fairness evaluations.

This paper offers a conceptualization of embedded agency as emerging across the four levels of structuration. This contributes to debates in strong structuration theory through conceptualizing and analyzing how actors may be both be constrained and oriented by structures while reflexively adapting structures across the four levels of structuration. The paper extends extant pricing fairness research by illustrating how actors' construction of fairness flexibly develop fairness evaluations while responding to legitimacy and societal demands, including the needs of particular customer groups.

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance within the reference price literature by investigating which is the best measure of reference price for the, as yet, unstudied context of new product categories. The paper also intends to examine another reference price issue for the new product category context: whether greater price uncertainty in this context makes it worthwhile to measure consumer confidence in reference price perceptions.

This research uses the experimental method to determine which measures of reference price are best suited to the new product context, by removing all other confounding influences.

The findings confirm that consumers tend to evoke the fair price concept for new product categories and the expected price concept for existing categories. The paper also finds that confidence in reference price measures, while theoretically useful, does not add to the understanding of reference price effects in new product categories, probably because respondents tended to be overly confident in their perceptions, despite lacking in more objective measures of product category knowledge.

Several studies in the literature have commented on the issue of fragmented measurement in the reference price domain. Some studies have offered theoretical guidance on measures to use. This is the first study to provide empirically tested theory on which measures to use and is the first study to examine reference price effects in new product categories including testing the usefulness of the confidence measure.

From 2007, New Zealand firms must report the cost of granting employee stock options (ESOs). Market‐based option pricing models assume that option holders are unconstrained in their portfolio choices and thus are indifferent to the specific risk of any firm. By contrast, ESO holders are frequently required to hold portfolios that are over‐exposed to the firm that employs them and so adopt exercise policies that reflect their individual risk preferences. Applying the model of Ingersoll (2006) to hypothetical ESOs, we show that ESO cost can be extremely sensitive to employee characteristics of risk aversion and under‐diversification. This result casts doubt on the usefulness of any market‐based model for pricing ESOs, since such models, by definition, produce option values that are independent of employee characteristics. By limiting employee discretion over the choice of exercise date, vesting restrictions help reduce the magnitude of this problem.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize several dimensions of product‐price knowledge and to develop measurement variables that qualify a person's product‐price knowledge. Assuming product‐price knowledge is a multidimensional construct, the relationship between its dimensions is to be investigated and consumer characteristics are to be analyzed according to whether they influence these dimensions.

Drawing on existing research, the paper theoretically develops a framework that proposes a taxonomy of product‐price knowledge and leads to a road map to identify determinants that probably affect a person's product‐price knowledge. Applying data on 319 shoppers, a path model simultaneously estimates the internal structure of the specified dimensions of product‐price knowledge, and determines the influence of the selected consumer characteristics on product‐price knowledge.

The proposed taxonomy sees product‐price knowledge as encompassing not just isomorphic prices, i.e. actually or formerly perceived and recalled prices. Rather, inferential prices, such as the normal price, or the upper reservation price for a product, as well as knowledge about price‐setting conditions and confidence in memorized prices, comprise important elements of a person's product‐price knowledge. As a result, there are several measurement variables to qualify a person's product‐price knowledge. The empirical results identify price mavenism, price consciousness, the use of a shopping list, and shopping frequency, as determinants of the accuracy and size of, and confidence in, one's product‐price knowledge, even though the impact structure is not uniform. There are some indications that formerly encountered price stimuli represent a relatively obsolete part of a consumer's product‐price knowledge.

Research on product‐price knowledge should not be restricted to measuring the accuracy of recalled paid prices. Size of product‐price knowledge, and confidence in one's price knowledge, are identified as measures that are at least equally important to qualify a person's product‐price knowledge as accuracy. Furthermore, size and confidence are also additional dependent variables in analyzing determinants of consumers' product‐price knowledge. This is important for researchers and practitioners.

The proposed taxonomy and the empirical results lead to finer grained understanding of product‐price knowledge as a multi‐dimensional construct and its determinants.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the role of market-based transformative service initiatives (TSIs) during the refugee crisis and shed light on how such TSIs increase inclusion of refugees in service systems by using market forces while creating broader benefits for service organizations themselves.

This paper uses the case of the World Food Program’s (WFP) Dalili smartphone application targeting Syrian refugees in the context of Lebanon. A mixed-methods approach, including in-depth interviews with the retail managers of the local supermarkets and statistical cross- and intra-regional analysis on the retailing mix elements of the local supermarkets was adopted for the empirical investigation.

The results show that the WFP’s Dalili TSI increases service inclusion of refugees by facilitating their access to the essential food services easier and at affordable prices and helps them integrate into the host community. Furthermore, such market-based TSIs were shown to have broader benefits for other stakeholders in the food retail ecosystem including retailers and nonrefugee shoppers as they are successful in improving the retailing management standards of the participating supermarkets by decreasing the average retail price of the merchandise, increasing their variety and assortment, increasing promotional offers and improving the customer service level.

This research fills the gap in the literature for empirical investigation on the impact mechanism of market-based TSIs on service inclusion and well-being of refugees. In contrast to the majority of TSIs studied in the literature that are designed by governments or nonprofit organizations in the areas such as higher education, health care and humanitarian aids, this study focuses on the case of TSIs developed by supranational organizations using market forces in the food retail ecosystem. Furthermore, the findings suggest that TSIs could also benefit the service organizations that offer such initiatives.

The findings of this paper have implications for service organizations and policymakers and their ability to design effective market-based TSIs during the refugee crisis.

The studied case in the context of TSIs in the food retail ecosystem and the empirical approach used are academically novel. Moreover, focusing on the refugee crisis in the Middle East region is rather understudied in the service research literature.

This research aims to model the relationship between the credit risk signals in the credit default swap (CDS) market and agency credit ratings, and determines the factors that help explain the variation in such signals.

A comprehensive analysis of the differences in the relative credit risk assessments of CDS-based risk signals and agency ratings is provided. It is shown that the divergence between credit risk signals in the CDS market and agency ratings is explained by factors which the rating agencies may consider differently than credit market participants.

The results suggest that agency credit ratings of relative riskiness of a reference entity do not always correspond with assessments by CDS spreads, as the price of risk is a function of additional macro and micro factors that can be explained using statistical analysis.

This research is unique in modeling the relationship between the credit risk assessments of the CDS market and the agency ratings, which to the best of the authors' knowledge has not been analyzed before in terms of their agreement and the level of discrepancy between them. This model can be used by investors in debt instruments that are not explicitly CDSs or which have illiquid CDS contracts, to replicate market-based, point-in-time credit risk signals. Based on both market-based and firm-specific factors in this model, the results can be used to augment through-the-cycle credit risk assessments, analyze issues surrounding the pricing of CDSs and examine the policies of credit rating agencies.

Looks at the pricing policy of the Jaguar XJ12 which is primarily cost based. Demonstrates the importance of having an organizational structure capable of supplying relevant information for market based pricing methods. Identifies factors which play an important part in the pricing strategy for Jaguar. Analyses the market‐based policy and cost‐based policy, stating that a market‐based policy and cost‐based policy, stating that a market‐based policy is more appropriate in that it provides: greater profits; satisfied customers; and a reduction in the factors leading to the black market.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the determinants of consumers' evaluations and purchase intentions of gift promotions. Factors analysed relate to the promoted product, the gift, the relationship between the product and the gift, and consumer traits and perceptions.

A 2 (product type: utilitarian vs hedonic) × 2 (gift type: utilitarian vs hedonic) × 2 (brand type: high equity vs medium equity) between‐subjects factorial design was undertaken. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 247 respondents in the UK.

Gift attractiveness is the most important driver of consumers' overall evaluation of gift promotions, followed by the attitude toward the promoted brand, the perceived fit between the promoted product and the gift, the hedonic nature of the gift, plus value expression and entertainment benefits perceived by consumers. Results also reveal that deal proneness is positively associated with the hedonic benefits of value expression benefit and entertainment benefit. Finally, the overall evaluation of gift promotions with both brand attitudes and deal proneness positively influences consumers' purchase intentions.

To generalise these findings, future research should use a wider sample.

The findings of this study provide guidelines for marketers designing their gift promotional strategies.

The increased popularity of gift promotions necessitates a better understanding of the factors influencing consumers' evaluations. This study addresses the lack of research in this area by simultaneously investigating the effect of different key factors.