Reflections and Emerging Perspectives on the Strategic Implications of a Multi-dimensional Pricing Environment

For decades, the majority of research studies conducted on consumer price perceptions have adopted a uni-dimensional view of price, in which price was assumed to consist of a single number (for example, $19.99). However, since the mid-1990s a growing volume of consumer research studies have recognized that prices can often be far more complex than a single number, and may systematically consist of multiple dimensions. The recognition of this fact, triggered by early studies of the topic (for example, Estelami, 1996, 1997; Gourville, 1998; Morwitz, Greenleaf and Johnson, 1998), has opened new channels for researching the ways in which the complexities of price may inhibit the human brain from an objective evaluation of price offers (for example, Gendall et al., 2006; Kim and Kramer, 2006; Varki, Sabherwal, Della Bitta and Moore, 2006). The significance of this line of inquiry has further increased during the past decade, which has witnessed an explosive growth in the markets for consumer and financial services, where multi-dimensional prices are used frequently.