Consumer Price Evaluation Research Based On Reference Price

Price has been a hot topic in economic field since the ancient times. Price controls people's economic behaviors no matter in the past or in the future. Price determines sellers' profit, and moderates buyers' actions. Nowadays, product categories have become more and more abundant. Price is not only the numerical mix that reflects equivalent exchange. In the meantime, consumer's behavior is not simple either. In order to explore the relationship between price behavior and price, researchers have made lots of efforts. Especially, foreign scholars have done relative research that focused on consumer price behavior. Price has been a cross-subjected research domain. However, basic theory on consumer price behavior does not reach common consensus. The definition of price and the usage in consumer price behavior debate in particular. This paper wants to adopt the viewpoint that consumer's price evaluation to understand price overall perception from price perception character. It discovers the formation of consumer price perception characters and its mutual impact, and explores the moderating effect that price environmental factor operates consumer price perception character.This research develops from three layer: the first layer is that consumer price overall perception as output variable influences consumer price overall evaluation; the second layer is price character as independent variable on consumer price evaluation; the third layer is price environmental variable that impacts price perception character. Among them, the first layer and the second layer constructs consumer price overall perception sub-model in order to analyze three dimensional features that includes price cheapness, price fairness and price variety. At the same time, different price dimension respectively influences price overall perception, and the character of different price dimension is also examined. The second and the third layer builds moderating sub-model that price environmental factor impacts consumer price perception character, which using three environmental moderating factor that contains consumer involvement degree, price perception experience as well as satisfaction degree measures the influential mode that is affected by consumer price perception.Chapter three analyzes the reason of consumer price perception character based on relative theory of consumer price behavior, and sets up the theoretical model that consumer integrates and evaluates price based on reference price. Next, chapter four explains the theoretical model, and explores the mechanism that price character influences consumer price overall perception. It concretely puts forwards the relation that price character impacts consumer price overall perception, and the influential character that price environmental factor affects consumer price evaluation. In the end, this paper brings forward hypothesis according to the above analysis.Chapter five and chapter six respectively examines the relative hypothesis that chapter four constructs. It explains the industry that does empirical research, the source of questionnaire, the fashion of survey, and etc. It elementarily analyzes the pretest data in the first place. Then, using SPSS 15.0 and AMOS 7.0 analyzes and discusses survey data by factor regression analysis, factor function equation, structure equation model, and etc.This paper achieves research conclusions by theoretical and empirical analysis:First, consumer price overall perception can be jointly expressed by price cheapness, price fairness and price variety. That is to say, consumer purchased price decision is moderated by three price perception character that includes price cheapness, price fairness and price variety.Second, there is mutual impact among consumer perception. Price cheapness negatively influences price fairness and price variety, but price fairness positively affects price variety.Third, the influential mode on the alteration of consumer reference price is not the same because of different price character. Price cheapness negatively affects consumer reference price, but consumer price fairness and price variety can selectively increase consumer reference price.Fourth, price character affects transactional price evaluation respectively. Research shows that price fairness and price variety positively affects transactional price cheapness. On the contrary, in the evaluation of transactional price fairness, the effect of price cheapness is positive, but the effect of price variety is negative. In the evaluation of price variety, the effect of price cheapness is positive, and the effect of price fairness is negative.Fifth, this research builds up consumer price overall perception model that is weighted by variance contribution of price character factor. Marketing strategy managerial personnel can implement market tactics management thanks to consumer behavior character.Sixth, the increase of consumer's involvement degree positively affects the perception of price cheapness, price fairness and price variety.Seventh, the increase of consumer's price perception experience positively affects the perception of price cheapness, fairness and variety.Eighth, the hypothesis that satisfaction degree affects price character perception does not get empirical support, but author does not think consumer price behavior cannot moderate satisfaction degree.The contribution of this paper includes:First, this paper builds dialectic relation among consumer price overall perception character that is made up cheapness, fairness and variety based on consumer surplus theory, prospect theory and mental accounting theory, as well as empirically investigates some consumer behavior features, such as consumer price perception character as well as price environmental factor influences price perception character. This paper improves consumer price behavior cognitive theory and fills up theoretical blank between external impact of price environment and internal behavior character of consumer.Second, the established model of consumer price perception character fills the limitation that consumer price numerical model is in short of application, and provides managerial personnel with consumer price behavior character. This contribution brings theoretical researcher and practitioner from qualitative perception of consumer price behavior character up to quantitative evaluation and managerial level.Third, this paper unveils mutual relation among price dimension and its impact towards consumer price overall perception, and gives the theoretical direction to marketing management.Fourth, in the light of research on consumer price perception character model, this paper further investigates price environment that affects price evaluation, and expounds the relation between price environmental factor and consumer price character. This paper solves the puzzle that price environmental factor which stress on influences consumer decisive behavior cannot help managerial personnel know the extent which market tactics influences consumer. Hence, the fruit that price environment affects consumer price perception character must be put into practice so as to integrate pricing and promotion tactics in marketing strategy as well as set up efficient marketing mechanism.