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臺大管理論叢
第
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1
期
and negative emotions have the same degree of influence on the nine-ending price effect.
Further, Study 4 is to test the fourth hypothesis that people with positive emotions and
people with negative emotions display greater nine-ending price effect in the SE condition
than in the JE condition.
Participants
The sample comprised 180 undergraduate university students (96 females and 84
males with a mean age of 20.6 years and aged between 18 and 24) recruited from a large
southern university.
Design, Procedure, Stimuli, Emotion Induction and Quantitative Estimates
Study 4 used a 2 (positive, negative) x 3 (separate nine-ending, separate zero-ending,
and joint nine-ending and zero-ending) between-subjects design. The stimuli for Study 4
were the notebooks shown in Table 1. The participants were asked to make quantitative
estimates of the number of items that could be purchased with a given budget. There were
two items available within each product type, each of which had a different fictional brand
name (S and K) and a price ending in a different number (a nine-ending price and a zero-
ending price one dollar higher). The prices of S-branded items in the same leftmost group
(the experiment group) were manipulated so they had nine-ending prices ($5.59), whereas
the prices of K-branded items were manipulated so they had zero-ending prices one cent
higher ($5.60). The participants were randomly divided into three subgroups, each of
which was randomly assigned to one of three conditions: SE of nine-ending prices, SE of
zero-ending prices, and JE of prices ending in both nine and zero.
The participants were informed that they needed to shop for notebooks. The
questionnaire prepared for the study included product descriptions (brand name and price)
and pictures. Each participant received the questionnaire inquiring into the S-brand
product, the K-brand product, or both brands. Participants assigned to the first two
conditions saw only one product of a specific brand on the same page, whereas those in
the third condition saw products in the same category from both brands on the same page.
Participants in the SE condition saw only one kind of price, i.e. either a nine-ending price
or zero-ending price. By contrast, participants in the JE condition saw both kinds of prices
side by side at the same time. The emotion induction method employed was the same as
that used in Study 1a, and the independent variable was the same as in Study 3.
Results
A two-way ANOVA based on the average of the two manipulation check items (α =
.92;
F
(2, 174) = 17.86,
p
< .01) showed a significant interaction between the level of