THE CONSUMER DECISIONS AND THE ANCHORING HEURISTIC: AN ANALYSIS OF RATIONALITY OF THE CHOICE PROCESS

Authors

  • Marcos Roberto Luppe
  • Claudio Felisoni de Angelo

Keywords:

Decision-making, Heuristics, Anchoring, Rationality, Consumer behavior.

Abstract

There is little literature on biases related to the choice process in consumption decisions. One of these biases is the anchoring, that is, the adoption of a reference, logical or not, which directs the choice of individuals. This paper aims to identify and analyze the effects of the anchoring on the consumer decision making process related to the perception and estimation of product and service prices. It was conducted an experiment with undergraduate students of the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy of the University of São Paulo. The experiment model involved three groups from a unique population. The calibrating group generated estimations about prices of products and services without any mentions to anchors. The other groups developed estimations after evaluating an anchor selected from the estimation distribution of the calibrating group. It was verified that the references with lower values anchor more strongly the opinion of consumers. These results bring relevant implications to the definition of price policies in Brazilian retailing companies. Synthetically this article indicates that traditional pricing techniques do not exhaust the possibilities for pricing policies.

 

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Author Biographies

Marcos Roberto Luppe

Doutorando em Administração de Empresas pela Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo (FEA-USP).

Coordenador de cursos da Fundação Instituto de Administração da Universidade de São Paulo.

Claudio Felisoni de Angelo

Doutor em Economia e livre-docente pela Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo (FEA-USP).

Professor do Departamento de Administração da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo.

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Published

2010-09-17

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 6 (2010): Thematic Special Edition on Decision Making in Organizations

Section

Decision-Making in Organizations

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