Memory distortion and consumer price knowledge

Purpose – Research has shown that there are different dimensions of price knowledge. But it is still not clear what consumers can remember upon price exposure and what can be retrieved later and why. This research aims to focus on the influence of encoding conditions as well as price characteristics on later price recall or evaluation. Design/methodology/approach – Two controlled experiments using student subjects were conducted. Participants' encoding objectives and relative price difference between paired products were manipulated and their influence on price recall and evaluation examined. Findings – The research showed that there is usually a memory distortion of the original product price information upon retrieval. The degree of distortion is influenced by the characteristics of the prices as well as the focus of attention at encoding and the direction of distortion was influenced by consumers' beliefs of pricing norms. Research limitations/implications – In this research, price difference instead of individual price was manipulated so the interpretation of individual price recall accuracy is constrained. Future research should also examine under what conditions consumers apply a certain type of encoding objective and the effects of memory distortions on consumer choice behaviors. Practical implications – Results suggest that, for marketers to clearly communicate the price information to consumers and ensure that consumers remember and use the price information as the marketers intended, it is important to examine the compatibility between price exposure environment and form of price information that consumers are likely to retrieve from memory. Originality/value – The results shed further lights on understanding of consumer price information processing and retrieval.