221 /304
221
臺大管理論叢
第
28
卷第
1
期
people’s preferences remain unchanged, whereas in reality, people may display different,
or reverse, preferences within two normatively equivalent evaluation conditions (Hsee,
1996). Stimulus options that are hard to evaluate (greater uncertainty) independently (SE
condition) become relatively easier to evaluate (less uncertainty) when they are presented
together (JE condition). Hence, in the SE condition, as nine-ending and zero-ending prices
are presented and evaluated independently, there is no comparison target for each price,
which increases the level of uncertainty involved, as people can rely only on their mental
interpretations of the prices. Consequently, they are more likely to be influenced by the
left-digit effect, which results in the underestimation of the perceived value of the nine-
ending price through converting the numerical digits of both prices into magnitudes, and
the difference between the allocated positions of nine-ending and zero-ending prices on an
internal analog magnitude scale will be significant.
In the JE condition, however, as nine-ending and zero-ending prices are presented
and evaluated simultaneously, the two prices are comparison targets for each other, which
greatly reduce the level of uncertainty. People perceive that the minor difference in the
ending digits (i.e., one cent/dollar difference) caused the difference in the leftmost digits
between two prices. Although they still perceive the price digits as a whole, or an analog
representation, on a mental analog magnitude scale, the magnitude perception determinant
of the prices is no longer anchored by the difference in the leftmost digits, and the
difference between the allocated positions of nine-ending and zero-ending prices on the
analog magnitude scale will be very insignificant, which will diminish the influence of the
difference in the leftmost and ending digits between nine-ending and zero-ending prices.
Additionally, the separate and joint evaluation modes also have an obvious influence
on processing fluency. According to Bettman and Kakkar’s (1977) information format
hypothesis, the format in which information is given has a great influence on information
processes (Kleinmuntz and Schkade, 1993; Schkade and Kleinmuntz, 1994). This study
therefore inferred that the SE and JE modes may affect consumers’ judgment and
decision-making processes. Consistent with the change-process theory developed by
Mellers, Chang, Birnbaum, and Ordóñez (1992), their findings show that the preference
between price and rating can be reversed by many factors such as how information is
displayed and the demand of cognitive effort (Garbarino and Edell, 1997; Payne, 1982). It
was therefore reasonable to predict that people make more effort to judge difficult-to-
evaluate attributes in the JE condition when comparing them to easy-to-evaluate attributes
simultaneously. In other words, making a decision in the JE mode will lead consumers to