Biased attributions of a price increase: effects of culture and gender

In developing pricing strategies for the global marketplace, sellers have to consider the differences in how their consumers process information on prices. One potential difference is in attributions: whether the consumer blames the seller for a negative outcome such as a price increase. Prior research suggests that in individualistically oriented groups such as Anglos (and perhaps males), causal attributions are egocentrically biased: the cause of a negative outcome tends to be attributed to the actions of another person. In collectively oriented groups such as Hispanics (and perhaps females), the bias is much less. Empirical results, however, reveal that all groups demonstrate biased attributions of price increases. As a result, they have a less positive attitude toward the seller. The difference is that Hispanics and females generally infer that sellers have behaved in a more socially approved manner than do Anglos and males.