Online Price Search: Impact of Price Comparison Sites on Offline Price Evaluations

Consumers increasingly rely on Internet price comparison sites (PCS) to gain knowledge about the market. The prices generated by a PCS search can act as contextual reference prices and influence the attractiveness of prices encountered later as consumers shop offline at local stores. This paper demonstrates that both PCS retailer ratings and the shape of the PCS price distribution influence the impact of PCS search results on later price evaluations. A favorable PCS retailer rating increases the perceived validity of the price associated with that retailer, enhancing the impact of that PCS price on offline price evaluations (Study 1). The shape of the PCS price distribution can also influence later price evaluations, however this effect depends on the information provided by the PCS retailer ratings. When PCS retailer ratings are similar, implying similar validity for the associated prices, low PCS prices and those appearing more frequently in the PCS price distribution have more impact (Studies 2 and 3). When PCS retailer ratings are variable (some high and some low), the PCS price distribution effect occurs only when the PCS retailer ratings provide congruent information about price validity — that is, the most frequent price is offered by retailers with more favorable ratings. Study 3 shows that price validity inferences do mediate this result. Finally, we depart from the offline shopping context to show that when consumers choose a retailer directly from the PCS search results, the effect of PCS retailer ratings is stronger for high-priced retailers and for consumers who rely less on the retailer price as a heuristic to infer retailer service level. Based on our findings we offer insights for online and offline retailers when considering strategic responses, such as price matching guarantees.