The Effect of Pricing Frame on Purchase Intention: A Mediated Moderation Model of Product Type

With the development of Internet and e-commerce, pricing frame (like partitioned pricing vs. combined pricing) plays an important role in behavioral decision-making. Previous studies found that compared with combined pricing, partitioned pricing prevailed in its influence on purchase intention, but some found the reverse results. Researchers categorized them into the different kinds of moderating roles, which included the variables related to price composition, consumer's characteristics, seller's reputation and external situations, etc. But the role of product type (hedonic goods vs. utilitarian goods) was seldom investigated. Meantime, some studies found its underlying emotional reactions of consumers before they bought or decided to buy the hedonic goods, which called anticipatory guilt. So this was the main focus of this study. We developed three hypotheses and designed two online experiments in the 2 (pricing frame: partitioned pricing vs. combined pricing)×2 (product type: hedonic goods vs. utilitarian goods) between-subjects design. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the main effect of pricing frame on purchase intention was significant, which favored partitioned pricing. Meanwhile, product type moderated the effect of pricing frame on purchase intention. Specifically, compared with combined pricing, partitioned pricing increased the purchase intention for hedonic goods, but not utilitarian goods. Further, in Experiment 2, we found that the moderation effect was fully mediated by anticipatory guilt, which verified a mediated moderation effect. These findings confirmed and extended previous studies suggesting that partitioned pricing prevailed more than combined pricing, especially in the online business context. Moreover, there was some boundary conditions of product type on the effect of partitioned pricing. Furthermore, the emotional reactions of anticipatory guilt was investigated to mediate the interaction effect. Our findings can also be a useful guideline for marketing business to adopt the suitable pricing tactics to enhance the purchase intention.