IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wpaper/268.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price as a signal of product quality: some experimental evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Mastrobuoni
  • Franco Peracchi
  • Aleksey Tetenov

Abstract

We use experimental data to disentangle signaling and budgetary effects of price on wine demand. The experimental design allow us to isolate in a simple and intuitive way the two effects. The signaling effect is present and nonlinear: it is strongly positive between EUR3 and EUR5, and undetectable between EUR5 and EUR8. We find a similar nonlinear price-quality relationship in a large sample of wine ratings from the same price segment, supporting the hypothesis that taster behavior in the experiment is consistent with rationally using prices as signals of quality. Price signals also have greater importance for inexperienced (young) consumers.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Franco Peracchi & Aleksey Tetenov, 2012. "Price as a signal of product quality: some experimental evidence," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 268, Collegio Carlo Alberto, revised 2013.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.268.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Héla Hadj Ali & Céline Nauges, 2007. "The Pricing of Experience Goods: The Example of en primeur Wine," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(1), pages 91-103.
    2. Tibor Scitovszky, 1944. "Some Consequences of the Habit of Judging Quality by Price," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 12(2), pages 100-105.
    3. Ali, Héla Hadj & Lecocq, Sébastien & Visser, Michael, 2010. "The Impact of Gurus: Parker Grades and en primeur Wine Prices," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 22-39, April.
    4. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    5. Pauline M. Ippolito & Alan D. Mathios, 1990. "Information, Advertising and Health Choices: A Study of the Cereal Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(3), pages 459-480, Autumn.
    6. Ashenfelter, Orley, 2010. "Predicting the Quality and Prices of Bordeaux Wine," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 40-52, April.
    7. Ori Heffetz & Moses Shayo, 2009. "How Large Are Non-Budget-Constraint Effects of Prices on Demand?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 170-199, October.
    8. Philippe Mahenc, 2004. "Influence of Informed Buyers in Markets Susceptible to the Lemons Problem," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(3), pages 649-659.
    9. Gerard J. Tellis & Birger Wernerfelt, 1987. "Competitive Price and Quality Under Asymmetric Information," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(3), pages 240-253.
    10. Asher Wolinsky, 1983. "Prices as Signals of Product Quality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(4), pages 647-658.
    11. Michael Spence, 1976. "Symposium: The Economics of Information: Informational Aspects of Market Structure: An Introduction," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 591-597.
    12. Min Ding & Rajdeep Grewal & John Liechty, 2005. "Incentive-aligned conjoint analysis," Framed Field Experiments 00139, The Field Experiments Website.
    13. Ippolito, Pauline M & Mathios, Alan D, 1995. "Information and Advertising: The Case of Fat Consumption in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 91-95, May.
    14. Bagwell, Kyle, 2007. "The Economic Analysis of Advertising," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1701-1844, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Palma, David & Ortúzar, Juan de Dios & Rizzi, Luis Ignacio & Guevara, Cristian Angelo & Casaubon, Gerard & Ma, Huiqin, 2016. "Modelling choice when price is a cue for quality: a case study with Chinese consumers," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 24-39.
    2. Villas-Boas, Sofia B, 2020. "Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating Under Asymmetric Information," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt08c456vk, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    3. Gregory Colson & Jay R. Corrigan & Carola Grebitus & Maria L. Loureiro & Matthew C. Rousu, 2016. "Which Deceptive Practices, If Any, Should Be Allowed in Experimental Economics Research? Results from Surveys of Applied Experimental Economists and Students," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(2), pages 610-621.
    4. Umbas Krisnanto, 2017. "Purchase Behavior of Rare Products: The Case of Vespa in Indonesia," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 7(4), pages 26-33.
    5. Palma, Marco A. & Ness, Meghan L. & Anderson, David P., 2015. "Buying More than Taste? A Latent Class Analysis of Health and Prestige Determinants of Healthy Food," 2015 Conference (59th), February 10-13, 2015, Rotorua, New Zealand 202566, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    6. Marco A. Palma & Meghan L. Ness & David P. Anderson, 2017. "Fashionable food: a latent class analysis of social status in food purchases," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 238-250, January.
    7. Qihua Liu & Shan Huang & Liyi Zhang, 2016. "The influence of information cascades on online purchase behaviors of search and experience products," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 16(4), pages 553-580, December.
    8. Bonnet, Céline & Hilger, James & Villas-Boas, Sofia B., 2017. "Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating under Asymmetric Information - The Case of Wine Expert Opinions," TSE Working Papers 17-834, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised May 2019.
    9. Jonathan Willner, 2019. "Private Universities and NCAA D-III Athletics as a General Recruiting Tool," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 293-307, August.
    10. Clarissa Laura Maria Spiess Bru, 2023. "Does the Tasting Note Matter? Language Categories and Their Impact on Professional Ratings and Prices," Working Papers Dissertations 105, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    11. Palma, Marco & Ness, Meghan & Anderson, David, 2015. "Prestige as a Determining Factor of Food Purchases," 2015 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2015, Atlanta, Georgia 196694, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    12. Jimenez Mori, Raul, 2021. "It’s not price; It’s quality. Satisfaction and price fairness perception," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    13. Kavita Sharma & Shivani Garg, 2016. "An Investigation into Consumer Search and Evaluation Behaviour: Effect of Brand Name and Price Perceptions," Vision, , vol. 20(1), pages 24-36, March.
    14. Tian, Jing & Chen, Rong & Xu, Xiaobing, 2022. "A good way to boost sales? Effects of the proportion of sold-out options on purchase behavior," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 156-169.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. G. E. Fruchter, 2009. "Signaling Quality: Dynamic Price-Advertising Model," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 479-496, December.
    2. Villas-Boas, Sofia B, 2020. "Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating Under Asymmetric Information," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt08c456vk, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    3. Dubois, Pierre & Nauges, Céline, 2010. "Identifying the effect of unobserved quality and expert reviews in the pricing of experience goods: Empirical application on Bordeaux wine," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 205-212, May.
    4. Hattori, Keisuke & Higashida, Keisaku, 2014. "Misleading advertising and minimum quality standards," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-14.
    5. Bonnet, Céline & Hilger, James & Villas-Boas, Sofia B., 2017. "Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating under Asymmetric Information - The Case of Wine Expert Opinions," TSE Working Papers 17-834, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised May 2019.
    6. Salvatore Piccolo & Piero Tedeschi & Giovanni Ursino, 2018. "Deceptive Advertising with Rational Buyers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(3), pages 1291-1310, March.
    7. Bester, Helmut & Ritzberger, Klaus, 2001. "Strategic pricing, signalling, and costly information acquisition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(9), pages 1347-1361, November.
    8. Arthur Campbell & C. Matthew Leister & Yves Zenou, 2020. "Word‐of‐mouth communication and search," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(3), pages 676-712, September.
    9. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2006. "Advertising Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 93-113, March.
    10. Olivier Bargain & Jean‐Marie Cardebat & Raphaël Chiappini, 2023. "Trade uncorked: Genetic distance and taste‐related barriers in wine trade," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(2), pages 674-708, March.
    11. Mert Hakan Hekimoğlu & Burak Kazaz, 2020. "Analytics for Wine Futures: Realistic Prices," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(9), pages 2096-2120, September.
    12. Philippe Masset & Jean‐Philippe Weisskopf, 2022. "At what price should Bordeaux wines be released?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 392-412, January.
    13. Bagwell, Kyle & Riordan, Michael H, 1991. "High and Declining Prices Signal Product Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 224-239, March.
    14. Inderst, Roman & Pfeil, Sebastian, 2014. "An "Image Theory" of RPM," MPRA Paper 54139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Daniela Rroshi & Michael Weichselbaumer, 2021. "What is in a price? Evidence on quality signaling for experience goods," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp311, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    16. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    17. Mert Hakan Hekimoğlu & Burak Kazaz & Scott Webster, 2017. "Wine Analytics: Fine Wine Pricing and Selection Under Weather and Market Uncertainty," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 202-215, May.
    18. Antonis Michis & Anna Markidou, 2013. "Determinants of retail wine prices: evidence from Cyprus," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 267-280, August.
    19. Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2019. "The Informational Role of Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(2), pages 606-629, April.
    20. Thomas de Haan & Theo Offerman & Randolph Sloof, 2015. "Money Talks? An Experimental Investigation Of Cheap Talk And Burned Money," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1385-1426, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pricing; signaling; product quality; wine ratings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cca:wpaper:268. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.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.