Business Commons^™

Comparative Price And The Design Of Effective Product Communications, Thomas Allard, Dale Griffin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors propose amodel relating a product's comparative price to the construal level of its associated communications and show how perceived expensiveness shapes consumers' response to the wording of marketing communications. A series of six studies shows that for both absolute low-and high-cost product categories, comparatively expensive (inexpensive) products are preferred when accompanied by high-construal (low-construal) messages, due to the conceptual fluency of the "match" between price-induced psychological distance and construal level. The model provides novel implications for designing effective marketing communications: comparatively expensive versions of objectively low-priced products (e.g., an expensive chocolate truffle) are best promoted through more abstract …