Comma N' cents in pricing: The effects of auditory representation encoding on price magnitude perceptions

Keith S. Coulter, Pilsik Choi, Kent B. Monroe

Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2012 · Volume 22 · Issue 3

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcps.2011.11.005

Abstract

Numbers and prices can be processed and encoded in three different forms: 1) visual [based on their written form in Arabic numerals (e.g., 72)], 2) verbal [based on spoken word-sounds (e.g., “seventy” and “two”), and 3) analog (based on judgments of relative “size” or amount (e.g., more than 70 but less than 80)]. In this paper, we demonstrate that including commas (e.g., $1599 vs. $1599) and cents (e.g., $1599.85 vs. $1599) in a price's Arabic written form (i.e., how it is perceivedvisually) can change how the price is encoded and represented verbally in a consumer's memory. In turn, the verbal encoding of a written price can influence assessments of the numerical magnitude of the price. These effects occur because consumers non-consciously perceive that there is a positive relationship between syllabic length and numerical magnitude. Three experiments are presented demonstrating this important effect.

Keywords

Behavioral pricing, Numerical cognition, Auditory (verbal) representation, Price magnitude

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