Communicating Price Information through Semantic Cues: The Moderating Effects of Situation and Discount Size

While several studies have examined how the specific wording (i.e., semantic cue) used to communicate a price offer affects consumers' perceptions of value, this area of research has not produced a set of consistent findings. To resolve the apparent inconsistencies, the current article builds on past research and explains why a consumer's response to a semantic cue depends on the situation (or decision context) and the discount size. The results of two studies are reported. The first experiment provides evidence that the relative effectiveness of two widely used types of semantic cues depends on both consumers' decision context and the level of processing evoked by the discount size. The second experiment replicates the semantic cue by situation interaction and demonstrates the robustness of this effect across store familiarity. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.