Event-related Potentials Correlates Of The Price Framing Effect In The Purchase Of Product Bundles

With fiercer market competition,bundling has become a common marketing strategy.Pricing strategy is an important issue in bundling sales strategy,and optimization of bundling pricing strategy has become an important weapon for the firms to participate in market competition.Price is more than just a number,it can arouse consumers' complex emotions,in different situations,consumers will have different perception of the same price.Therefore,It5s urgent that marketers have to show concern for the problems that how to price the bundling products could be better in line with consumers?emotional and cognitive characteristics and then to gain consumers' recognition.Price framing effect refers to the phenomenon that the essence of price information is consistent,while it is presented in a replaceable and different format,which influencing consumers5 behavior.Although research have found that the different format of price clues can affect the consumers' value perception and purchase intention in the field of marketing,controversy still exists between relevant conclusions,moreover how price frame influences consumers' cognitive and affective reactions,whether these reactions can change consumer decision,and whether the different sources of wealth will modulate the impact of price frame on consumer decision-making is still unclear,especially to contexts in bundling.In addition,in the existing studies,the research about the influence of price frame on counsumers5 purchase decision was mainly measured by self-report.Although the measurements reflected the price framing effect to a certain extent,they were postmortems and it's hard for consumers to fully explain their really thinking,which brought a certain bias.Based on the above analysis,two issues need to be explored:(1)How do different format of price clues affect consumers'purchase decisions in bundling context?What is the neural mechanism?(2)Whether the different sources of wealth moderate the impact of the price frame on consumers' purchasing decisions,and if so,what is the neural mechanisms?In order to solve these problems,the study mainly used the neurosciece experimental approach,and designed three progressive substudies to explore the cognitive mechanisms of price framing effect with ERPs technique.Study 1 mainly elucidated the cognitive process of how the different forms of discount frame affect consumers' purchase decisions.On the basis of study 13 study 2 aim to identifying the decision preference reversal conditions,and mainly investigated the price framing effect from behavioral and neurological level.Finally,study 3 further probed the influence of freebie frame on consumers' purchase decision under different wealth sources behaviorally and neurally.Based on the above researches,we got the following three main conclusions:(1)Discount frame influences the consumers' purchase decision.At the same level of benefits in bundling sales,the discount on the high-priced product(DH)and on the overall bundle(DB)led to higher purchase rate and increased P300 amplitudes than the discount on the low-priced product(DL),which was suggestive of the cognitive process of evaluative categorization.(2)The ultimate discount,or "freebies frame",reverses counsumers' purchase decision.When evaluating the overall value of the bundling,a higher purchase rate and a shorter reaction time for zero price condition(ZP)in contrast to normal price condition(NP),which resulting in a shift of decision-making.Moreover,enlarged LPP amplitude was elicited by ZP condition relative to NP,which signaled the stronger positive emotional evoked by the freebie,and an affect that could extend to the evaluation of the bundle and made the bundle in ZP ostensibly more attractive.(3)The source of wealth moderates the price framing effect.In the context of promotional-gift under bundling,when under hard-earned wealth,compared with utiliarian freebie,hedonic freebie led to smaller N2 amplitude and larger LPP amplitude,respectively demonstrating the cognitive conflict process during decision-making,and the retrieval of emotional valence and motivation coding processing.While when under windfall gain,there was no significant difference for N2 and LPP between the two types of freebies.The study mainly used cognitive neuroscience experimental,which was a new attempt in study methodology and investigated effect mechanism of price framing effect.The main theoretical contributions are expounded in the following aspects:(1)Based on anchoring and adjustment theory,the current study explored discount framing effect in bundling,further expanded the adaptability conditions of the weighted additive model,which improved the generalizability of the model.(2)Based on the mental arithmetic rules of mental accounting theory,the research made deep investigation of the effect mechanism of freebies frame in bundling sales,and provided important extension for existing theory.(3)Based on the multiple accounts rules of mental accounting theory,the study considered the wealth source factors,and revealed the moderating effect of the factor on the effect mechanism of the price frame,which was a significant extension of price framing effect studies and provided new ideas and theoretical basis on psychological pricing strategy.(4)With the cognitive neuroscience approach,the current study revealed the dynamic cognitive process of the price framing effect,which endowed with new growth points for price framing effect,and interpreted mental accounting theory from a fresh perspective.