Plausible versus implausible tensile price claim: Selective accessibility model approach

Retailers frequently use exaggerated price discount advertisements with a tensile price claim (TPC; e.g., Save up to 70%) to attract consumers because they expect that once consumers enter a store, they will purchase low- or medium-discounted products. Drawing on the selective accessibility model, this study investigated the way in which an implausibly high maximum level of savings stated in a TPC influences consumers' expected price discount (EPD) and perceptions of actual price discounts across different types of TPCs (i.e., TPC stating a maximum level and TPC stating a range of savings). This study also investigated two situations in which consumers have previous knowledge of a product's price discount versus when they have less or no knowledge of the discount. For both conditions, a single-anchor TPC (i.e., Save up to Y%) that stated an implausible maximum level of savings led to a higher EPD and lower perceptions of the deal (i.e., perceived savings, price fairness, and perceived value) with respect to the actual price discount than did a TPC with a plausible maximum level of savings. In contrast, when the TPC stated two anchors (i.e., Save X-Y%) and consumers had knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs assimilated only toward the plausible anchor (X), and ignored the implausibly high maximum price discount (Y), resulting in a lower EPD and higher perceptions of the deal of the actual price discounts than a TPC that stated a plausibly high maximum level of savings. In contrast, when consumers had no knowledge of the price discount, their EPDs only adjusted toward the more plausible anchor (X), regardless of whether they perceived the maximum anchor as plausible or implausible. Thus, there was no difference in consumers' perceptions of Save X-Y% between implausibly and plausibly high Y%.