Where You Shop Affects How You Choose: Retailer Price Image and the Importance of Enriched versus Comparable Attributes

This research documents a novel influence of retailer price image (RPI): its effect on what consumers choose within the retailer. Because a high RPI is associated with a high likelihood of finding lower prices elsewhere, we propose that shopping at a retailer with a high RPI, relative to a low RPI, increases the salience of the option to defer choice (i.e., to leave the retailer and search elsewhere). We further propose that the increased salience of the no-choice option alters the importance consumers place on enriched attributes (e.g., brand, unique design) versus comparable attributes (e.g., megapixels, number of settings) when choosing an option (i.e., when they do not defer). The findings of seven experiments show that high-RPI settings increase the relative importance of enriched attributes, thereby making options dominating on enriched attributes more likely to be chosen in high-RPI settings than in low-RPI settings.