IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bgu/wpaper/0907.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Relative Thinking Exist In Real-World Situations? A Field Experiment With Bagels And Cream Cheese

Author

Listed:
  • Ofer Azar

    (Department of Business Administration, Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Ben- Gurion University of the Negev)

Abstract

Many experiments show that consumers consider relative price differences even when only absolute price differences are relevant from an economic perspective, a phenomenon that was denoted "relative thinking." These experiments, however, were conducted using hypothetical questions. To test whether the relative thinking bias also exists in real-world situations, a field experiment where subjects could purchase either a bagel or a bagel with cream cheese was conducted. The monetary addition for the cream cheese was kept constant ($0.20) in both treatments, but the bagel's price varied ($0.05 in one treatment and $0.30 in the other). Relative thinking then implies that more people should add the cream cheese when the bagel's price is higher, because the relative price increase for the cream cheese is then smaller. However, the results did not document any relative thinking – more people (in percentage of those who purchase) added the cream cheese when the bagel's price was lower (the difference between the treatments, however, was not statistically significant). A replication of the experiment as a hypothetical-scenario experiment did document relative thinking, suggesting that introduction of financial incentives might alleviate relative thinking.

Suggested Citation

  • Ofer Azar, 2009. "Does Relative Thinking Exist In Real-World Situations? A Field Experiment With Bagels And Cream Cheese," Working Papers 0907, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:bgu:wpaper:0907
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/humsos/Econ/Workingpapers/0907.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Azar, Ofer H., 2008. "The effect of relative thinking on firm strategy and market outcomes: A location differentiation model with endogenous transportation costs," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 684-697, November.
    2. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Köhler, Katrin, 2016. "Exchange asymmetries for bads? Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 231-241.
    3. Helfrich, Magdalena & Herweg, Fabian, 2020. "Context-dependent preferences and retailing: Vertical restraints on internet sales," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    4. Azar, Ofer H., 2009. "Do consumers make too much effort to save on cheap items and too little to save on expensive items? experimental results and implications for business strategy," MPRA Paper 20962, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Ola Andersson & Jim Ingebretsen Carlson & Erik Wengström, 2021. "Differences Attract: An Experimental Study of Focusing in Economic Choice," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(639), pages 2671-2692.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Relative thinking; Experimental economics; Field experiment; Financial incentives; Behavioral economics; Product differentiation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bgu:wpaper:0907. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Aamer Abu-Qarn (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edbguil.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.