Impact of “High Quality, Low Price” Appeal on Consumer Evaluations

Marketers frequently adopt a "high quality, low price" appeal in advertisements.However, the price-quality inference theory implies that this contextual appeal may not be well-accepted by consumers because it contains two contradictory cues: high quality and low price.This article investigates how consumers evaluate this appeal through two laboratory experiments.Study 1 shows that the appeal leads to favorable price perceptions and purchase intentions when the product price is high; it leads to high quality perceptions when the price is low.Study 2 shows that these effects are salient when consumers have a weak price-quality schema or a low need-forcognition.