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gap between consumer emotion, the cognition of monetary gain or quality loss, and
consumer purchase intention in relation to items with nine-ending prices.
Third, consistent with processing fluency explanations, Study 3 shows there is an
interaction between emotional valence and emotional certainty in nine-ending purchase
quantity estimates. That is, certainty and positive emotions induce the highest level of
processing fluency, resulting in the largest purchase quantity estimates among consumers,
whereas uncertainty and negative emotions induce the lowest level of processing fluency,
resulting in the smallest purchase quantity estimates among consumers. This research also
distinguished between the influences of incidental emotional certainty and uncertainty on
the quantity of nine-ending priced item purchases and concluded that certainty in one’s
emotional state induces a higher level of processing fluency than that generated by
uncertainty in one’s emotions.
The findings of Study 4 demonstrate that consumers experiencing positive emotions
who make their choices in the SE mode have the highest level of processing fluency,
resulting in the largest purchase quantity estimates, whereas those in a negative emotional
state who make decisions in the JE mode have the lowest level of processing fluency,
resulting in the smallest purchase quantity estimates. Study 4 further demonstrates that
regardless of the emotional valence of the consumer, purchase quantity estimates for items
with nine-ending prices are lower than those for items with zero-ending prices one level
higher (e.g., $1.99 vs. $2.00) when prices are evaluated individually (the SE mode), and
that there is no significant difference between nine-ending and zero-ending prices when
both prices are evaluated side by side or simultaneously (the JE mode). These findings
show that different evaluation modes result in different levels of processing fluency. The
overestimate and underestimate results in Studies 3 and 4 also demonstrate the influence
of emotional valence on the image effect.
In sum, the studies reported in this article make four broad contributions to the nine-
ending price literature. First, this study’s use of the novel concept of processing fluency
provides stronger evidence which proves that incidental emotion influences the nine-
ending price effect. This research has found that people’s emotional state has an influence
not only on the level effect of nine-ending prices, but also on their image effect. The
second contribution to the literature is to demonstrate the mechanism by which processing
fluency acts as a mediator, whereby happy consumers with a high level of processing
fluency perceive nine-ending prices as higher than do sad consumers with a low level of
processing fluency. Third, this study distinguished between the influences of incidental