Paper Title
Anchoring Takes it All: Anchoring Availability and Psychological Distance as Predictors of Consumers’ Judgment of Products’ Costs
Abstract
Consumer’s decision making is typically based on value judgment. However this judgment is commonly biased
by factors that are not directly related to costs and benefits of the product. Instead, judgment is often based on heuristics and
information that stand out. In this study we focused on three factors known to bias judgment and tested their joint influence
pattern on price evaluation. Consumers’ (in)sensitivity to product’s costs was tested as function of: anchoring (i.e. given vs.
non given products’ price), availability heuristic (i.e. availability of the different product costs prior to price judgement) and
the degree of psychological distance (operationalized as abstract versus concrete framing of the costs). Participants were
asked to assess what they considered a fair price and the price they would be willing to pay. The results indicated that when
anchoring is enabled, price judgments are sensitive to the anchor but insensitive to availability and psychological distance.
When no anchor is offered, an availability and psychological distance influence different aspects of value judgment.
Index terms - Judgment, consumers, anchoring, availability, psychological distance, fair price