{"id":12244,"date":"2013-04-17T12:35:57","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T16:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=12244"},"modified":"2013-04-17T02:35:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T06:35:12","slug":"study-suggests-culture-may-play-role-in-whether-people-judge-product-by-its-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2013\/04\/study-suggests-culture-may-play-role-in-whether-people-judge-product-by-its-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Study suggests culture may play role in whether people judge product by its price"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <em>Journal of Consumer Research <\/em>press release via ScienceDaily:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" alt=\"comparison shopping\" src=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Shopping5.jpg\" width=\"206\" height=\"275\" \/><strong>Consumers from less individualistic cultures are more likely to judge the quality of a product by its price<\/strong>, according to a new study in the<em> Journal of Consumer Research.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Culture influences the tendency to use the price of a product to judge its quality. <strong>Although price-quality judgments are made by consumers across cultures, less individualistic consumers (Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Chinese) rely more on price to judge quality than do individualists (Americans, British, French, Canadians, Australians)<\/strong>,&#8221; write authors Ashok K. Lalwani (Indiana University) and Sharon Shavitt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Less individualistic consumers have a <em>holistic<\/em> thinking style and are therefore more likely to see things as interconnected and to find relationships between various product attributes<\/strong>. Individualists, in contrast, have an <em>analytic<\/em> thinking style and tend to focus on separating and distinguishing between product attributes and less on the relationships between them.<\/p>\n<p>In a series of studies, consumers were encouraged to think holistically (versus analytically). <strong>Those from less individualistic cultures were more likely to use price to judge the quality of products as diverse as paper towels, shaving cream, hand soap, bicycles, and watches<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>These findings help to identify viable target markets for companies with higher prices. <strong>Advertisements or in-store contests inviting consumers to focus on background images or to identify interconnections in a larger picture should make consumers think more holistically and rely more on price as a signal for quality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because less individualistic consumers are more likely to use the price of a product to infer its quality, they may represent a better prospective market for higher-priced brands, particularly when brands compete on the basis of quality. <strong>Although consumers around the world are responsive to deals and price-reductions, competing largely on the basis of lower price may be less effective for collectivistic markets<\/strong>, particularly when launching new brands or promoting brands whose prices are not well known,&#8221; the authors conclude.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Journal of Consumer Research press release via ScienceDaily: Consumers from less individualistic cultures are more likely to judge the quality of a product by its price, according to&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2013\/04\/study-suggests-culture-may-play-role-in-whether-people-judge-product-by-its-price\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[96,233,364,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12244"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12341,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244\/revisions\/12341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}