Exploring the price anchoring effect in mobile commerce: An experimental study

Abstract This study explores the influence of external reference price and store brand awareness on consumers' internal reference price, transaction utility, purchase intention, and search intention in mobile commerce. A 3 × 2 two‐factor experimental design for both utilitarian and hedonic products was adopted to collect the sample data. A total of 189 valid responses were analyzed using a MANOVA approach. The results indicate that for the utilitarian product context, external reference price affects consumers' internal reference price, transaction utility, and purchase intention but does not affect search intention and that store brand awareness affects consumers' internal reference price, transaction utility, purchase intention, and search intention. Further, store brand awareness has a moderating effect on the relationship between external reference price and internal reference price. For the hedonic product context, external reference price affects consumers' internal reference price and transaction utility but does not affect purchase intention or search intention, while store brand awareness affects consumers' internal reference price, transaction utility, purchase intention, and search intention. Also, store brand awareness has a moderating effect on the relationship between external reference price and search intention. These findings provide several important theoretical and practical implications for mobile commerce pricing decisions.