Multidimensional Price Comparison: the Moderating Role of ACRoss Consumers and ACRoss Firms Price Comparison on Perceived Fairness, Regret, and Satisfaction

participants who didn’t participate in the first pretest were asked to rate the extent of different feelings they wanted to experience the last time they went to a nightclub or a fine restaurant. Results show that participants wanted to experience more arousal than pleasure at nightclubs, whereas they wanted to experience more pleasure than arousal at fine restaurants. Questionnaires with a screening question asking whether they had been to a nightclub or a fine restaurant in the last one month were given to undergraduate students in two U.S. universities. Consistent with the findings of Study 1, the results showed that pleasure had a direct effect on satisfaction in the pleasure-seeking hedonic service context. As hypothesized, arousal also had a direct effect on satisfaction in the arousal-seeking hedonic service context.This research adds to the literature of consumer goal orientation and service consumption experience. It further examines consumers’ pleasure-seeking and arousal-seeking goal orientation in different hedonic service contexts. This research also shows how goal orientation determines the direct and indirect impact of affect (pleasure and arousal) on satisfaction. Based on the results of the two empirical studies, we can conclude that the affect that consumers pursue most will have a strong and direct impact on satisfaction; whereas, the impact of other desirable secondary affect on satisfaction will be mediated by perceived service quality. Abstract This study is part of a research project that examines the interaction of dimensions in a transaction space of reference price. Research on reference price can be aligned into a congruent perspective by using Bolton, Warlop, and Alba’s (2003) four dimensional transaction space, which postulates that consumers may consider the price of any point along the consumers (i.e., comparing between consumers), products (i.e., comparing cost and profit), firms (i.e., comparing between competitors), and/or time (comparing across time) dimensions in a four dimensional transaction space as a reference point. The results of such realignment exercise enlighten an insight, that sparse effort has been expended to investigate, and clearly separate, both independent and joint influence of multidimensional price comparison on consumer behavioral variables. Of the four dimensions, the consumers and firms dimensions are particularly important because comparison across consumers is related to the concept of fairness and comparison across firms is related to the concept of regret. While both concepts influence consumer satisfaction, no study has investigated the joint influence of reference price across consumers and across firms on fairness and justice. This investigation not only contributes to both research on reference price and satisfaction but also links the two streams of research together. The relative importance of the two concepts on consumer satisfaction in different price comparison situations may be Abstract Fast development of electronic technology and low entry barrier precipitated a heated competition in the online business (Auger and Gallaugher 1997; Klein 1998). More and more online shops are seeking new ways to stand out the competition to win over customers, loyal ones in particular. Extant researches focusing on off-line business found store image a key contributor to business performance (Nevin and Houston 1980; Samli 1989; etc.). Online store also bears image which is able to create a competitive advantage that is not easily duplicated by other Extended Abstract Brand architectures involving a parent brand can improve the perception of their associated brands and allow for a simple and cost saving introduction of new products (Smith, 1992). New or established product brands may benefit from associations with parent brands (Aaker & Keller, 1989; Sattler, Völckner, & Zatloukal, 2002). The opportunity of such positive transfer effects, however, comes at a price: The transfer is neither restricted to positive affect,