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The purpose of this article is to conceptualize dimensions of price salience. Price salience influences price perceptions and deal evaluations. This is especially true when a price consists of more than a single number (multi‐dimensional prices). Yet, the very notion of what makes a price salient remains unanswered. By providing a clear conceptualization of different dimensions of price salience and their influence on price perception, we integrate and extend extant research findings.

By drawing on extant research on price salience and salience in general, the paper develops a framework of how different dimensions of price salience are defined and influence price perception.

The paper identifies the four basic dimensions of price salience: visual, semantic, computational, and magnitude salience. It is argued that each dimension has a unique influence on price perceptions.

Although widely employed as a key variable in pricing research, price salience has not been clearly defined and issues related to price salience are scattered in the literature. By integrating those issues under a single rubric, the paper enable's pricing researchers to tackle issues related to price salience in a systematic way. Further, it offers several propositions regarding price salience that future research could examine.

This article helps practitioners by providing a clear understanding of how each dimension of price salience influence price perceptions. By digesting this article, practitioners can better understand how their price presentations work and better formulate their pricing strategies.

Pay what you want (PWYW) is a participative pricing mechanism that permits customers complete freedom to choose prices. PWYW literature reports the influence of external reference price (ERP) on customers' price decisions and payments. The current research examines the influence of ERP presence, salience and understanding at the seller level by analysing customers' perceptions of seller price image dimensions and purchase intentions.

Study 1 tests the impact of ERP presence and salience in controlled lab settings while Study 2 takes this investigation further by including the moderating effect of ERP understanding on seller price image dimensions and purchase intentions in online settings.

Results illustrate the positive impact of ERP presence on all seller price image dimensions excluding the perceived price level. Perceived price fairness mediates the impact of ERP presence on perceived value. ERP salience positively impacts price processability. ERP presence and salience attached to it positively impact customers' purchase intentions through seller price image dimensions.

This is possibly the first paper to investigate the ERP effect on seller price image dimensions in a PWYW context that lacks fixed posted prices.

This study proposes a framework based on salience theory and shows that focusing on one type of risk (idiosyncratic or systemic) can explain overpricing of securities ex ante, and resales at low prices during crisis periods.

The author consider an overlapping generations (OLG) model where each generation lives for two periods and there is no population growth. Agents (investors) start their lives with an endowment W > 0 and have mean-variance utility. They invest their endowment when young and consume when old. Each period, the young investors optimally choose their portfolio from different risky assets acquired from the old generation, all assumed to be in fixed supply.

The author show that investor salience bias can explain excess volatility of asset prices and the resulting fire-sales in periods of financial turmoil. A change in salience – from one component (idiosyncratic) to the other (systemic) – will generate excess volatility. Interestingly, higher risk aversion generally exacerbates the excess volatility of prices. Moreover, the model predicts that if a big systemic shock hits the financial system, due to salience bias the price of systemic assets falls sharply. This relates to the observed fire-sales of assets during the global financial crisis.

The proposed model and results suggest that there may be a scope for intervention in financial markets during turbulences. In terms of ex ante policies the study suggests that investors and regulator should use better risk assessment technologies.

This is the first study constructing a tractable model based on the argument that investor salience may exacerbate the excess volatility of prices during financial downturns. The author relate salience to two types of risk; idiosyncratic and systemic and assume that investors' risk perception is biased towards the type of risk that is currently salient based on prior beliefs or past data. The author show that the diversification fallacy of the precrisis period, where seemingly safe assets were overpriced, can be explained by agents overweighing idiosyncratic risk and ignoring systemic risk.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how factors that affect the processing of bundled price information moderate consumer response to a price discount on the bundle. Literature on categorical vs piecemeal processing of information predicts that consumers will be inclined to process a bundled price categorically unless circumstances encourage a piecemeal processing approach. Marketing relevant variables that foster piecemeal processing should result in stronger effects for discount size on bundle choice.

This paper reports two experiments that demonstrate that the effect of discount size on bundle choice is moderated by increased salience of price information and lower familiarity with the purchase situation, both of which increase item price processing.

When the presentation format encouraged item price processing with more salient item prices or a less familiar purchase situation, a discount on the bundle significantly increased the likelihood of bundle choice. When circumstances did not encourage item price processing, discounts on the bundle relative to the item prices had little effect on choice.

Additional research is recommended to test boundary conditions, the effects of additional presentational/situational factors and explicit consumer welfare implications.

Results indicate that a price discount on a bundle is only effective/necessary when the purchase situation motivates and enables consumers to engage in piecemeal processing of item price information. When large price discounts are offered on the bundle, marketers should create a situation that encourages item price processing, in order to maximize the effect.

This paper adds to a relatively new perspective in the bundling literature which has not fully examined if and when consumers process item price information. It is found that responsiveness to price discounts is enhanced by managerially relevant variables that increase the likelihood of item price processing.

In drip pricing, companies advertise low prices for products or services and then tack on additional surcharges later in the purchase process. This tactic has not only become popular for airlines but also for other online services, such as retailers and telecommunication companies. Despite the widespread use of drip pricing in the marketplace, little is known about its effects on consumer behavior. The purpose of this paper is to compare the effects of drip pricing with those of price partitioning. Specifically, it elaborates on perceived value, perceived deception, purchase intentions, and the moderating effect of price consciousness.

The paper develops a conceptual framework and tests four hypotheses with an experimental study on a purchase decision for a continental flight booked through an online travel agent. The experiment is based on a between-subjects design with two groups (n=130). The data are analyzed with multivariate statistics and structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that drip pricing for service offerings leads to inferior results compared with partitioned pricing in terms of perceived value, perceived deception, and, ultimately, purchase intentions. The findings also indicate that the effects differ depending on the customer’s price consciousness.

The study draws from previous studies on partitioned pricing and replicates their findings. However, it is one of the first studies to elaborate on moderators and mediators of the consequences of drip pricing in a service context.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate customers' intentions to purchase mobile communications services and how these intentions are affected by the customers' price perceptions in two customer segments – a mobile segment and a combined segment. A further aim was to gain insight into the formation of price perceptions, and customer characteristics that underlie the differences between purchase intentions and price perceptions.

The study was conducted in the Finnish mobile services market. The sample data were collected through a postal survey (n=3,000) sent to customers of a Finnish teleoperator. In analyzing empirical data the explanatory factor analyses, linear regression analyses, and analysis of variance were applied.

The results indicated that a significant and positive relationship exists between customers' price perceptions and their purchase intentions, and that the formation of price perceptions is significantly influenced by satisfaction with pricing and services. Price transparency was found to be negatively associated with customers' price perceptions. Gender, age, and experience of service use were found to explain the differences in customers' perceptions.

By segmenting customers according to the research results and targeting pricing schemes specific to these segments would potentially improve customers' price perceptions and their intentions to purchase mobile services. The study also supported the use of multi‐dimensional pricing schemes as it was found to positively influence customers' price perceptions.

This paper provides new practical and theoretical insights into the relationship between purchase intentions and price perception, and into the formation of the price perceptions of mobile services customers.

Price sensitivity is one of the key factors affecting to companies pricing choices. Yet in mobile services sector business practitioners are facing problems in pricing decisions as they are short of knowledge on their customers’ price sensitivity levels and dynamics. Therefore this study aims to focus on this unexplored field in order to provide more accurate tools for mobile service providers to price their services more effectively.

This study is conducted on Finnish mobile services markets. The focus is on examining how customers’ price sensitivity differs between different customer segments and which factors affect to the price sensitivity levels. The sample data is collected through a quantitative postal survey in which 3,000 questionnaires was sent to mobile service customers of a Finnish teleoperator. In analyzing the empirical data the explanatory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis was applied.

It was discovered that mobile service customers differ significantly in their price sensitivity levels; customers with moderate usage of mobile services are least price sensitive, while intensive and low‐end users are most sensitive to price changes. Important was also the notion that customers’ price perceptions and innovativeness levels were accurate indicators of their price sensitivity.

This paper has concentrated only on Finnish mobile services markets. In order to construct a robust set of indicators for international use, cross‐cultural study on testing the factors of this study should be conducted.

For business practitioners, the most distinctive finding of this paper are a new set of factors through which segmenting of their customers can be made more accurately.

With the findings of this paper a mobile service provider is able to increase efficiency of pricing of mobile services.

An increasing interest in consumer behavior online is the investigation of their price search activities. Most empirical evidence from Internet shopping literature suggests through reducing search cost, that the Internet will increase consumer price search and intensify price competition. This paper develops a conceptual model and a set of propositions to explain the main factors influencing online price search. Specifically, this model integrates the psychological search literature under the context of online environment by incorporating ability and cost to search for information into “perceived search efficiency”, and the factors that center on the perceived benefits and motivation of price search are investigated as well.

This paper aims to advance understanding regarding a particular religious belief and buying behavior.

Two online experiments were conducted among diverse respondents. Study 1 used a one-way, between-subjects design with three conditions: afterlife salience, control and mortality salience. The dependent measure was built on the notion of first-price sealed-bid auction. Study 2 used a similar procedure with two conditions: afterlife salience and control. Mortality was made salient in both conditions.

Making afterlife salient boosted the willingness to pay. This effect did not result from mortality salience, which suggests that this research is a unique contribution beyond works rooted in Terror Management Theory. This effect was mediated through positive product thoughts.

There has long been an imbalance between theoretical speculation concerning religion and cognition and actual empirical documentation. The present research adds to the emerging body of empirical investigations into this relation. It contributes to the conceptual richness of the stream of literature by examining one aspect of religiosity that has rarely been studied: the belief in afterlife. In addition, the findings go beyond correlational patterns toward discovering nonobvious cause and effect. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the few works that experimentally manipulate the notion of afterlife belief. This research also extends the understanding of pricing and willingness to pay by identifying a subtle environmental influence not recognized before.