The impact of the Internet and consumer motivation on evaluation of prices

This research seeks to add to our understanding of why consumers might be willing to pay disparate prices for goods offered over the Internet. An experiment was designed to examine the effects of motivation to shop and information load on the evaluation of price for a product in an online environment. The results indicated that the interaction between motivation to shop and information load significantly influenced price perceptions. For the motivated subjects, a high price level was evaluated as higher in value when the information load was excessive. On the other hand, when the motivated subjects did not have an excessive information load, they evaluated the low price level as better value. For less motivated subjects, the high price level was perceived higher in value and quality than the low price level. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.