Abstract

Four studies, across a range of domains, find a dragging-down effect in which consumers purchase fewer units of a product when a discount applies to more units. For example, consumers buy fewer peaches when each customer can buy up to three peaches at a discount than when each customer can buy only one peach at a discount or when there is no discount at all. In contrast to basic economic principles, this dragging-down effect implies that consumers purchase less (more) when the per-unit price is lower (higher). We propose and our results support an acceptability account: consumers will adopt the price-increase point (i.e., maximum discounted quantity) as their purchase quantity if that point falls within an acceptable range, and will ignore that point and purchase their initially preferred quantity instead if the price-increase point falls below the acceptable range. The current work enriches existing research on anchoring and pricing and carries implications for consumers, marketers, and policy-makers.

中文翻译：

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拖累效应：消费者对价格上涨做出的决策

摘要

涉及多个领域的四项研究发现了拖累效应当折扣适用于更多单位时，消费者购买较少产品的单位。例如，当每个客户可以折扣价购买最多三个桃子时，与每个客户只能以折扣价购买一个桃子或根本没有折扣时相比，消费者购买的桃子更少。与基本的经济原理相反，这种下拉效应意味着当单位价格较低（较高）时，消费者购买较少（更多）。我们建议并且我们的结果支持一个可接受的帐户：如果该价格点在可接受的范围内，那么消费者将采用提价点（即最大折扣数量）作为他们的购买量，并将忽略该点并购买其最初的首选数量价格上涨点低于可接受的范围。