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THE FREQUENCY OF QUANTITY SURCHARGES: REPLICATION AND EXTENSION
Author(s) -
WALKER ROSEMARY,
CUDE BRENDA
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
journal of consumer studies and home economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.775
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1470-6431
pISSN - 0309-3891
DOI - 10.1111/j.1470-6431.1984.tb00421.x
Subject(s) - replication (statistics) , laundry , unit (ring theory) , consumer research , unit price , extension (predicate logic) , business , marketing , computer science , microeconomics , economics , statistics , mathematics , geography , mathematics education , archaeology , programming language
Widrick's research has established that larger sizes of grocery products are not always less expensive per unit than smaller sizes, or that quantity surcharges exist. The purpose of this research was to validate and extend Widrick's work. In this research, the overall incidence of quantity surcharges was 18.6%. Surcharges were found to occur more often when numerous brand sizes were offered and non‐integer package size comparisons were required. Additionally, personal care products, not previously included in quantity surcharge research, were found to have a lower incidence of surcharges than food and laundry products. The research indicates there may be possible payoffs to consumers who make unit price comparisons rather than employing the economy size rule.