Extended Abstract: An Examination of the Effects of Effort on Price Fairness Judgments

Abstract

Recent research has shown that effort can influence consumers’ judgments of fairness (Darke and Dahl 2003) and deservingness (Reczek et al. 2014). Popular press provides evidence that consumers are willing to expend effort to get better prices, such as through behaviors exhibited on Black Friday (Tabuchi 2014). Furthermore, academic researchers have called for more investigation on the effects of social cues, such as referent effort—or the effort of another consumer—on consumer judgments of deservingness and price fairness (Darke and Dahl 2003; Haws and Bearden 2006).