Price tag in Retail-land: to stick or not to stick

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate if it is essential „to stick‟ Price Tag (further in text mentioned as PT) on items for average-priced apparel in retail stores. Other aims were to find out whether if PT presence would increase willingness-to-buy (further in text WTB) for customer as well as would it reduce sales pressure perception that is being strongly applied in recently by retailers in routine shopping. Besides it was proposed and proved that printed type PT would influence customers‟ trust into retailer‟s bona fides and would PT mode (printed or hand-written) influence WTB and perceived sales pressure. Quantitative method was applied in this research. Data collection was performed through survey type experiments. Questionnaires were administrated off-line as well as these were sent out and 116 applicable responses were received (29 respondents per group). The results indicated that majority of respondents, who were influenced by price while shopping, found PT presence very important and it reduced perceived sales pressure effect on customers and increased customer‟s WTB. Finally, it was proved that WTB was increased because customers more likely trusted printed PT than hand-written one. Therefore, author concluded the outcome to be in favor of „To stick‟ the PT.

Keywords: price tag presence, printed price tag, price importance, perceived sales pressure, willingness-to-buy.