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the JE mode and put more weight on this attribute than they do in the SE mode. Stated
differently, a preference reversal occurs in the joint condition.
According to Bettman and Kakkar (1977) study, they present that the information
format in which information is given has a great influence on the information processes
(Kleinmuntz and Schkade, 1993; Schkade and Kleinmuntz, 1994). We can infer, therefore,
that SE and JE, which are different information formats, may affect the judgment and
decision-making processes used by people. Consistent with the Change-of-Process Theory,
which states that the processes by which people combine information vary as a function of
the task (Mellers, Chang, Birnbaum, and Ordóñez, 1992), we maintain that the preference
between price and rating will be reversed by many factors, such as the display of information
and the demand of cognitive effort (Garbarino and Edell, 1997; Payne, 1982). It is therefore
reasonable to suppose that people will make more effort to judge the difficult-to-evaluate
attributes in the JE condition when simultaneously comparing them to easy-to-evaluate
attributes. In other words, more cognitive effort will be required when making a decision in
the JE mode than in the SE mode. Similarly to the comparisons of single attribute of price,
consumers may recall the possible reference price of this product intuitively in the SE mode,
whereas they may make much cognitive effort to compare nine- and zero-ending prices first
and then judge whether having to recall another reference price in JE mode.
Explained in terms of HSM, if people need to exert a lot of mental effort in performing
a task, they tend to use a systematic process for judgment and decision making; conversely,
people will use a heuristic process if less effort is exerted to judge and make decisions
(Chaiken, 1980, 1987; Chaiken and Maheswaran, 1994). Thus, this paper infers that people
will tend to use a systematic process in the JE mode when simultaneously comparing nine-
and zero-ending prices and a heuristic process in the SE mode.
In addition to extending Hsee (1996) Evaluability Hypothesis to include the SE and JE
conditions, this study investigates a third condition, the “sequential evaluation” (SQE)
condition, which is examined alongside the other two. It is constructed as the midpoint
between the SE and JE conditions with the stimulus options evaluated back-to-back in a
sequence (Moore, 1999). Bartels (2006) further explains that consumers may make an
absolute judgment first and then take the first price as a reference price to make a possible
comparative judgment strategy when facing a sequential mode. The significance of the SQE
mode is that it is becoming more and more common in the real world. For example, people
often click “next” button page by page to browse the information on products when they try
to buy things on the Internet. Even in physical retail stores, people may also remember