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2000). Both the perceived gain and underestimated price effects of nine-ending prices
make a product seem much cheaper to consumers than if it carried a zero-ending price,
and trigger an enhanced buyer response (Baumgartner and Steiner, 2007; Gendall,
Holdershaw, and Garland, 1997).
2.2 The Role of Incidental Emotion and Processing Fluency in the Nine-Ending Price
Effect
Psychological literature shows that emotional state can significantly affect decision
making (Elster, 1998; Isen, 1987; Zajonc, 1980). Emotion allows people to transcend the
details and to prioritize and focus on the decision to be made. However, it is not often to
see research examines how emotions affect consumer response to price. Price has typically
been examined from the cognitive perspective, occasionally with affect implicit (O’Neill
and Lambert, 2001). However, consumers do not act by cognition alone, they also use
human feelings and emotions to judge prices and transactions and make decisions
(Chandon, Wansink, and Laurent, 2000). Actually, theorists recognize that emotion and
cognition are interdependent, rather than competing, influences (Simon, 1967).
Emotion can be loosely defined as a physiological state of arousal triggered by
beliefs about something (Elster, 1998). An emotion “is experienced as a feeling that
motivates, organizes, and guides perception, thought, and action” (Izard, 1991). Emotions
are evaluative, rather than purely bodily sensations or cognitive judgments, in that they
evoke positive or negative valences that can be described using bipolar scales that define a
continuous spectrum from unpleasantness to pleasantness -- for example, unhappy to
happy.
However, the influence of emotional processing on nine-ending prices has been
largely ignored. Decision making is often intertwined with emotion. Although emotional
responses typically are characterized as irrational, it is argued that emotion and rational
decision making is complementary (Simon, 1967). Marcus, Neuman, and Mackuen (2000)
stated that negative emotion leads to more thoughtful decision making because it
engenders increased analytic processing and a low level of processing fluency.
Furthermore, the theory of emotional intelligence provides that people tend to use
emotions, specifically negative ones, to think deeply about their opinions (Marcus et al.,
2000). That is, understanding the roles played by emotion and processing fluency in the
context of nine-ending prices may help to clarify the gaps in nine-ending price theory and
apply this theory further in practice.