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4. General Discussion
Theoretical implications
Emotion has an important influence on the nine-ending price effect. As demonstrated
by the four studies reported in this article, an incidental emotional state can affect the
nine-ending price effect through processing fluency. Greater purchase intention is
associated with a nine-ending price only when people are in a positive emotional state that
induces a high level of processing fluency, rather than being in a negative emotional state
that elicits a low level of processing fluency.
The combined data from the four studies support the following findings. First, Study
1a demonstrates that positive affect increases the magnitude of the nine-ending price
effect, whereas negative affect reduces the size of the effect. Based on the proposition that
processing fluency plays a mediating role between emotional valence and nine-ending
prices, study 1b corroborates the results of Study 1a in showing that positive emotions
lead to a greater increase in the magnitude of the nine-ending price effect than do negative
emotions. This research also found that emotion influences the level effect not only
through the rightmost digit of the price (Study 1a), but also through the leftmost digit
(Study 1b). The use of completely different emotion induction procedures in Studies 1a
and 1b established the robustness of this observed effect of incidental emotion. In sum,
this study provides strong evidence that emotional valence influences the level effect of
nine-ending prices.
Second, consistent with processing fluency explanations, the findings of Study 2
show that incidental emotion affects the image effect through its influence on the
perception of monetary gain (the price image effect) or quality loss (the quality image
effect) produced by nine-ending prices. This finding is, with few exceptions, one rarely
reported in the literature (Lin, Wu, Chuang, and Kao, 2007; Sheng, Parker, and Nakamoto,
2007). That is, when combined with the findings of Studies 1a and 1b, emotional valence
is a key factor influencing not only the level effect, but also the image effect, of nine-
ending prices. Study 2 also shows the conditions in which nine-ending prices may, but will
not necessarily, be perceived as indicative of monetary gain: the perception of monetary
gain is more likely to arise when consumers experience positive emotions inducing a high
level of processing fluency, whereas they are more likely to perceive a loss of quality and
have a lower purchase intention when they experience negative emotions invoking a low
level of processing fluency. Thus, there seems to be a domain-invariant cognitive
phenomenon underlying the popularity of nine-ending prices. In sum, Study 2 bridges the