Scare Up Price-Quality Links After Scarcity

The price-quality link—if an item costs more, it probably is better—usually serves interests of both consumers and marketers. Shoppers can sort through multiple alternatives more quickly, avoiding choice overload as they achieve their desired balance of expenditure and performance. Marketers have another way to communicate quality differences, to supplement signals such as brand name, certifications, and reviews.
     Consider then research from Michigan State University, Indiana University, and The University of Texas at San Antonio which indicates the price-quality link wanes at times of item scarcity or when thinking about scarcity, such as what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This effect was seen in consumers’ considerations of an abundant versus spare assortment of vacation destinations. It also occurred when study participants were asked, before evaluating a large set of camcorders for possible purchase, to think about having experienced scarcity earlier in life.
     When an item category contains few alternatives or we’re otherwise concerned about scarcity, we put aside our natural tendency to place items from that category into subcategories. This natural tendency occurs because we want to avoid being immobilized by there being too many choices. The price-quality link allows us to subcategorize. But scarcity activates another natural consumer tendency—to have an adequate assortment to choose from.
     The consequent deactivation of the price-quality link generalizes. Although the scarcity may have been in the category of disinfect wipes, there’s a turning away for the broader cleaning products category of the relationship between item price and product quality.
     This might be fine for you. Maybe you’d like the shopper to consider alternatives which would otherwise be rejected as having insufficient quality because of their price. But in circumstances where you want to buttress the price-quality link, here are two research-based techniques:

• In product displays, arrange items in ways and with text which associates price with quality. Then allow modest expectations of lower-priced products. Certainly, deliver full value to every customer. People love getting a good deal. But encouraging customers to believe, "You get what you pay for," can be to your benefit.
• Bring friends into the consideration. Consumers were asked to estimate the price and quality of items ranging from yogurt to computers, assuming either that they paid for it or a friend paid for it. With the purchases made by friends, there was a more direct relationship between the price paid and the estimated quality of the item.

Successfully influence the most prosperous & most loyal consumer age group. For the specific strategies & tactics you need, click here.

Click for more…

Abandon Abundance After Attracting
Funnel Purchase Alternatives Maturely
Strengthen the Price-Quality Link
Inject Distance for Price-Quality Link
Experience How Experience Is Price-Quality
Depend on Interdependency for Price-Quality