IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/doi10.1086-673193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Power States Influence Consumers' Perceptions of Price Unfairness

Author

Listed:
  • Liyin Jin
  • Yanqun He
  • Ying Zhang

Abstract

The present research explores how the power state interacts with comparative references in shaping consumer perceptions of price unfairness. Five experiments found that high-power consumers perceive stronger price unfairness when paying more than other consumers do, whereas low-power consumers perceive stronger unfairness when paying more than they themselves paid in previous transactions. The distinction occurs because consumers experience a threat to their self-importance from different types of disadvantaged comparisons depending on their power states. These results show that the state of power determines consumers' respective channels for maintaining their self-importance and alters the relevance of different comparative standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Liyin Jin & Yanqun He & Ying Zhang, 2014. "How Power States Influence Consumers' Perceptions of Price Unfairness," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 40(5), pages 818-833.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/673193
    DOI: 10.1086/673193
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/673193
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/673193
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/673193?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Krista J. Li & Sanjay Jain, 2016. "Behavior-Based Pricing: An Analysis of the Impact of Peer-Induced Fairness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2705-2721, September.
    2. Wenjing Dou & Wei Lu & Dian Wang & Brady Hodges & Haipeng (Allan) Chen, 2020. "I Paid More than You (Before)?! The Effects of Self-Construal and Comparison Target on Price Unfairness Perceptions," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 7(1), pages 12-18, June.
    3. Ham, Sung H. & He, Chuan & Zhang, Dan, 2022. "The promise and peril of dynamic targeted pricing," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 1150-1165.
    4. Yong Zhang & Jiayu Ao & Jiayue Deng, 2019. "The Influence of High–Low Power on Green Consumption: The Moderating Effect of Impression Management Motivation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-16, August.
    5. Wang, Wangshuai & Raghunathan, Rajagopal & Gauri, Dinesh K., 2022. "Powerlessness, variety-seeking, and the mediating role of need for autonomy," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(4), pages 706-723.
    6. Zhang, Ke & Hou, Yuansi & Li, Gang, 2020. "Threat of infectious disease during an outbreak: Influence on tourists' emotional responses to disadvantaged price inequality," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    7. He, X. & Reiner, D., 2018. "Consumer Engagement in Energy Markets: The Role of Information and Knowledge," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1867, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    8. Sheng Bi & Jun Pang & Huan Chen & Andrew Perkins, 2024. "When feeling powerless, we crave nostalgia: The impact of powerlessness on the preference for nostalgic products," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 998-1017, July.
    9. Alexander Erlei & Mattheus Brenig & Nils Engelbrecht, 2024. "Consumer Behavior under Benevolent Price Discrimination," Papers 2404.03581, arXiv.org.
    10. Nicole Koschate-Fischer & Katharina Wüllner, 2017. "New developments in behavioral pricing research," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 809-875, August.
    11. Isabel P. Riquelme & Sergio Román, 2023. "Personal antecedents of perceived deceptive pricing in online retailing: the moderating role of price inequality," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 739-783, June.
    12. Isabella, Giuliana & Mazzon, José Afonso & Dimoka, Angelika, 2017. "Impacts of product type and representation type on the perception of justice and price fairness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 203-211.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/673193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.