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The role of price knowledge in consumer product knowledge structures
Author(s) -
Lawson Robert,
Bhagat Parimal S.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.10024
Subject(s) - categorization , product (mathematics) , frame (networking) , heuristic , domain knowledge , psychology , component (thermodynamics) , domain (mathematical analysis) , knowledge management , marketing , business , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , telecommunications , mathematical analysis , physics , geometry , thermodynamics
In this study price knowledge is viewed as a necessary component of a product knowledge structure, in which it is inferred from domain‐specific relations among product features. Consumers' knowledge of tuition rates of colleges and universities was investigated in two tuition‐estimation experiments. In Experiment 1, providing participants with seed knowledge of a small subset of listed schools improved the mapping properties of the estimates and reduced reliance on using the availability heuristic. In Experiment 2, similar effects were observed when instructions contained information about tuition magnitudes of school groupings, information about how to categorize schools into these groups, and, especially, both types of information combined. Results were interpreted within a frame structural view of consumer knowledge, in which price knowledge occupies an obligatory slot in a richly structured frame as opposed to being derived from memory of isolated exposures to specific prices. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.