Ilitch Business marketing professor Abe Biswas published in Journal of Retailing
UPDATE 5/27/20: This article was named runner-up for the 2020 Davidson Award for the best paper published in the Journal of Retailing in 2019.
Abhijit Biswas, Kmart Endowed Chair and professor of marketing in the Mike Ilitch School of Business, has had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Retailing. The article is titled “Are Low Price and Price Matching Guarantees Equivalent? The Effects of Different Price Guarantees on Consumers’ Evaluations.” The abstract can be found below.
Two of Biswas’ co-authors also have Ilitch School ties: Ph.D. program graduate Swati Verma, who is now on the faculty at Lawrence Technological University, and former marketing faculty member Abhijit Guha, who is now at the University of South Carolina.
The Journal of Retailing is devoted to advancing the state of knowledge and its application with respect to all aspects of retailing, its management, evolution and current theory.
Abstract
Some retailers offer price match guarantees, whereas others offer guarantees making the same promise but labeling these low price guarantees. Do consumers respond differently to these different price guarantee labels? To address this research question, this paper leverages insights from pricing, signaling, and regulatory focus theories to demonstrate - across multiple studies - that consumers perceive price match versus low price guarantees differently. In turn, contingent on consumers’ regulatory focus, this difference in perceptions feeds forward and influences consumers’ purchase intentions and postpurchase (e.g., repurchase) intentions. This paper contributes to theory, not only by showing differences across price match versus low price guarantees, but also by being the first to jointly examine purchase and post-purchase intentions relating to price guarantees. This paper also speaks to practice, noting contingencies that determine whether the price match or the low price guarantee label should be used.
