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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.

This paper aims to investigate how consumers adjust their price expectations for brands in response to previously encountered prices. The effects of two distinct components of price history, focal and contextual, are examined. The focal component represents the role of a brand's own previous price(s) in determining future price expectations. In contrast, the contextual component represents the impact of the prices of previously considered competing brands.

A total of 60 subjects were enrolled to participate in a longitudinal, quantitative, survey‐based study that required them to provide information on brand perceptions, price expectations, brand consideration and choice.

Empirical comparison of several model formulations confirms that both components are crucial in explaining how consumers adjust their price expectations in response to the prices of considered brands. Consistent with a wide body of research, a brand's own previous price exerts the greatest influence on price expectations. However, the extent to which contextual prices are assimilated depends on the composition of consumers' consideration sets. Avenues for future research and implications for brand pricing and positioning are discussed.

The results offer several unique perspectives that stand out from (and build further on) previous research. First, although previous research has examined the effects of competing brands' current prices on brand choices, it has not incorporated the prices of competing brands that may have been observed on previous shopping occasions. Second, measures and assesses the perceived variability within the consumers' consideration sets influences the impact of the contextual component on a brand's current reference price.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumers evaluate identical price offers in retail versus e‐tail environments. Within that context, it seeks to examine the likelihood of shoppers to continue searching for a better price within the same channel and their intentions to transit to another channel.

In total, 120 subjects provided information on gender and price knowledge and evaluated an advertised offer for a camera in one of two settings (retail or e‐tail). The offers in the two settings were identical in all respects. Then, subjects indicated the likelihood of finding a better price within the medium versus if they made a transition to a different medium.

Analysis reveals that consumers' evaluations and search behaviors are influenced by characteristics of the medium (retail versus e‐tail), but this effect is moderated by both gender and price knowledge. Females prefer a brick and mortar environment and are likely to seek information at such retailers, even when similar products are available online. However, males evaluate online offers better than identical store offers, and are less inclined to engage in channel transition. Finally, evaluations of online offers are positively related to price knowledge, whereas a reverse pattern of results is obtained for retail offers.

The findings shed light on how consumers evaluate identical online versus retail price offers, and their associated search intentions. These findings have practical implications for merchants who adopt a dual presence.

Although it has been proposed that recall processes play a role in the retail sales effects of 9‐ending pricing, substantial effects of price endings on the level of recalled prices has not been demonstrated. With an improved testing procedure, it is found that the level of a set of prices with low ending digits (such as 1 or 2 in the dollars place) is more likely to be overestimated in recall than the level of equivalent sets of prices with high ending digits (such as 6, 7, or 9 in the dollars place). The results of the study support the role of left‐to‐right processing of price information and point out some consequences for retailers of the use of low numbers in price‐ending digits.