Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

I Paid More than You (Before)?! The Effects of Self-Construal and Comparison Target on Price Unfairness Perceptions

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Customer Needs and Solutions Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Previous research suggests that when consumers encounter discrepant prices due to dynamic pricing, a social comparison evokes stronger unfairness perceptions than a temporal comparison does. In this paper, the authors show how this effect may vary depending on consumers’ self-construal. Two experiments find that while independent consumers perceive stronger price unfairness when paying more than other consumers, interdependent consumers perceive stronger price unfairness when paying more than what they did in the past. These effects occur because consumers are differentially sensitive, as a function of their self-construal, to social versus temporal comparisons in their self-appraisal. Our results show that self-construal affects consumers’ means for maintaining their self-appraisal and alters the relevance of different comparison targets in price unfairness perceptions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Smartphone is a frequently purchased product among our study participants. According to a report conducted by Deloitte in 2016, 51% of Chinese consumers purchased smartphones online, and 79% of them changed smartphones more than once every year (https://www2.deloitte.com/cn/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/2016-global-mobile-consumer-survey-china-edition.html).

References

  1. Aaker JL, Lee AY (2001) I seek pleasures and we avoid pains: the role of self-regulatory goals in information processing and persuasion. J Consum Res 28(1):33–49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Adams JS (1965) Inequity in social exchange. Adv Exp Soc Psychol 2:267–299

    Google Scholar 

  3. Albert S (1977) Temporal comparison theory. Psychol Rev 84(6):485–503

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bolton LE, Keh HT, Alba JW (2010) How do price fairness perceptions differ across culture? J Mark Res 47(3):564–576

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Chen H, Bolton L, Ng S, Lee D, Wang D (2018) Culture, relationship norm, and dual entitlement. J Consum Res 45(1):1–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Chiu CY, Hong YY, Dweck CS (1997) Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality. J Pers Soc Psychol 73(1):19–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cross SE, Madson L (1997) Models of the self: self-construals and gender. Psychol Bull 122(1):5–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. De Bruyn A, Bolton GE (2008) Estimating the influence of fairness on bargaining behavior. Manag Sci 54(10):1774–1791

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Festinger L (1954) A theory of social comparison processes. Hum Relat 7(2):117–140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Gardner WL, Gabriel S, Lee AY (1999) I value freedom but we value relationships: self-construal priming mirrors cultural differences in judgment. Psychol Sci 10(4):321–326

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Haws KL, Bearden WO (2006) Dynamic pricing and consumer fairness perceptions. J Consum Res 33(3):304–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Hayes A (2018) Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: a regression-based approach. The Guilford Press

  13. Heine S, Lehman DR, Markus HR, Kitayama S (1999) Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychol Rev 106(4):766–794

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Heine S, Kitayama S, Lehman DR, Takata T, Ide E, Leung C, Matsumoto H (2001) Divergent consequences of success and failure in Japan and North America: an investigation of self-improving motivations and malleable selves. J Pers Soc Psychol 81(4):599–615

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Heine S, Lehman DR (1995) Cultural variation in unrealistic optimism: does the west feel more vulnerable than the east? J Pers Soc Psychol 68(4):595–607

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Hong J, Chang HH (2015) I follow my heart and we rely on reasons: the impact of self-construal on reliance on feelings versus reasons in decision making. J Consum Res 41(6):1392–1411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Hong YY, Morris MW, Chiu CY, Benet-Martinez V (2000) Multicultural minds: a dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. Am Psychol 55(7):709–720

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Jin L, He Y, Zhang Y (2014) How power states influence consumers' perceptions of price unfairness. J Consum Res 40(5):818–833

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kemmelmeier M, Oyserman D (2001) The ups and downs of thinking about a successful other: self-construals and the consequences of social comparisons. Eur J Soc Psychol 31(3):311–320

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Lalwani AK, Shavitt S (2009) The “me” I claim to be: cultural self-construal elicits self-presentational goal pursuit. J Pers Soc Psychol 97(1):88–102

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Li KJ, Jain S (2015) Behavior-based pricing: an analysis of the impact of peer-induced fairness. Manag Sci 62(9):2705–2721

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Major B (1994) From social inequality to personal entitlement: the role of social comparisons legitimacy appraisals and group membership. Adv Exp Soc Psychol 26:293–293

    Google Scholar 

  23. Major B, Testa M (1989) Social comparison processes and judgments of entitlement and satisfaction. J Exp Soc Psychol 25(2):101–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Markus HR, Kitayama S (1991a) Culture and the self: implications for cognition emotion and motivation. Psychol Rev 98(2):224–253

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Markus HR, Kitayama S (1991b) Cultural variation in the self-concept. In The self: interdisciplinary approaches (pp.18–48). Springer New York

  26. Myers D (1987) Social psychology (2nd ed). McGrawHill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  27. Ross M, Wilson AE (2000) Constructing and appraising past selves 8, Memory brain and belief. 231–258. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

  28. Svenson O (1981) Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers? Acta Psychol 47(2):143–148

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Takata T (1987) Self-depreciative tendencies in self-evaluation through social comparison. Jpn J Exp Soc Psychol 27(1):27–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Trafimow D, Silverman ES, Fan RMT, Law JSF (1997) The effects of language and priming on the relative accessibility of the private self and the collective self. J Cross Cult Psychol 28(1):107–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Trope Y, Liberman N (2010) Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychol Rev 117(2):440–463

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Wilson AE, Ross M (2001) From chump to champ: people's appraisals of their earlier and present selves. J Pers Soc Psychol 80(4):572–584

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Wood JV (1989) Theory and research concerning social comparisons of personal attributes. Psychol Bull 106(2):231–248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Wu EC, Cutright KM, Fitzsimons GJ (2011) How asking “who am I?” affects what consumers buy: the influence of self-discovery on consumption. J Mark Res 48(2):296–307

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Xia L, Monroe KB, Cox JL (2004) The price is unfair! A conceptual framework of price fairness perceptions. J Mark 68(4):1–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Zell E, Alicke MD (2009) Self-evaluative effects of temporal and social comparison. J Exp Soc Psychol 45(1):223–227

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Zhang J (2009) The effect of advertising appeals in activating self-construals: a case of bicultural Chinese generation X consumers. J Advert 38(1):63–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. BOCI Research Limited, Room 08-10, 23/F, Bank of China Tower, 200 Yincheng Zhong Road, Shanghai, 200120, China

    Wenjing Dou

  2. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Wei Lu

  3. College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX, 78249, USA

    Dian Wang

  4. Robert J. Trulaske Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri, 700 Tiger Ave, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Brady Hodges

  5. Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, 550 South Limestone, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA

    Haipeng (Allan) Chen

Authors
  1. Wenjing Dou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wei Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Dian Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Brady Hodges
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Haipeng (Allan) Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Haipeng (Allan) Chen.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dou, W., Lu, W., Wang, D. et al. I Paid More than You (Before)?! The Effects of Self-Construal and Comparison Target on Price Unfairness Perceptions. Cust. Need. and Solut. 7, 12–18 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-019-00096-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-019-00096-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation