A Meta-Analysis on the Consequences of Price Fairness Perceptions: The Moderating Influence of the Economic Situation

摘要

While research on price fairness is still fairly recent compared to general research on price, a substantial number of studies have investigated the consequences of price fairness perceptions. None of these studies, though, has investigated how this relationship depends on the economic situation consumers in a country are facing. This is surprising given the fact that turbulent economic times call firms to increase their prices due to unforeseen business costs, and consumers experience such price increases with less money in their pockets. A primary reason for the fact that previous studies have not investigated the moderating influence of the economic situation on the effects of price fairness perceptions is the difficulties involved with a study design that requires variance across national economies and across time, which cannot be assessed in experiments or cross-sectional studies in a single country. Therefore, we perform a meta-analysis that accumulates 78 price fairness studies providing 253 effect sizes, spanning a period of more than 20 years and collected in 18 different countries that provides a unique opportunity to examine the moderating role of the economic situation on price fairness perceptions' effects on consumer responses.