Effects of Quality and Price Appeals on Consumers’ Internal Reference Prices and Quality Perceptions

Marketers frequently appeal to consumers through “high quality” and “low price” cues that are placed together in retail advertisements. We call this type of approach the “high quality and low price” (HQLP) appeal. Few studies have investigated how HQLP appeal influences consumers’ evaluations. In this paper, we analyze the effects of HQLP appeal on internal reference prices and quality perceptions in two retailer contexts: expensive and inexpensive stores. The results showed that consumers’ evaluations are influenced by both the HQLP appeal and the retailer context. For an expensive store, the appeal generated similar levels of expected price and willingness-to-pay (WTP), higher purchase intention for the expected prices, and lower quality perception. The inexpensive store generated an expected price lower than WTP, higher purchase intention for the expected price, and higher quality perception. Therefore the HQLP appeal works better for an inexpensive store than an expensive store.