Mental accounting and acceptance of a price discount

The paper reports five experiments related to a price reduction choice task. In Experiment 1 and in the control condition of Experiment 4, the finding reported by Tversky and Kahneman (1981) with the calculator problem is replicated. People show a difference in the rate of acceptance of a price reduction across the two versions of this problem. This finding has been explained as due to the use of a topical mental account of the offered price reduction. This paper studies the effect on the previous finding of four experimental manipulations of the calculator problem. In these situations, a relationship between the two purchases is provided in order to make their mental segregation difficult and favour the use of a comprehensive mental account of the price discount. Results show that when the two target purchases are embedded in a shopping list, an explicit expense budget is provided, and subjects are reminded that they can also buy the jacket at the other store, the effect reported in the control condition disappears. These results are interpreted by the notion of the focusing mechanism.