The price of a product or service is set by a company that follows a strategic plan based on the type and quality of offerings. This procedure takes into consideration multiple factors that should be addressed, such as production cost, labor cost, distribution cost and marketing cost. In addition to meeting the company's expenses, the marketing plan also plays a significant role in pricing decisions. The price of a product can have an attractive or repulsive characteristic towards the customer (Monroe 1979). This idea is underlined by behavioral research which clarifies that the consumer perceives the price as additional information on the quality of a product. However, other studies contradict such views by ignoring the power of price (Gabor and Granger 1966). Therefore, several researchers have looked into this topic and conducted different and interesting theories. Most of the findings are related to the psychological effects on customers' purchasing behavior and their perception of quality. Marketers use psychology to develop multiple ways to attract customers. Associating the price indication with perceived quality is an essential part, since in many cases it allows a direct and unconscious targeting through consumers. This power of attraction can be applied, but it can also be contradicted. Several researchers have studied these two cases and have concluded significant theories. To begin with, studies focus primarily on conditions under which price is perceived as a signal of quality. Toh and Berard, strongly underlined this point by introducing three main hypotheses:- “There is a substantial positive relationship between price and perceived quality for consumer goods.”- “The...... half of the paper ..... .women were found to be more dependent on prices than men in making judgments about product quality” (Toh and Berard 1984). In addition to gender, age also played an important role in this analysis. It was concluded that older consumers are more influenced by perceived price/quality than younger consumers. (Shapiro 1973). Regarding income effects, it has been shown that they do not strongly affect the quality of a product. “Both generations have been reported as positive (French et al. 1972; Toh and Berard 1984) and insignificant (e.g. Shapiro 1973).” Based on these three analyses, it can be concluded that the influence of demographic characteristics such as gender, age and income have a differentiated outcome depending on the type of consumer. Therefore, marketplaces have categorized their products based on demographic profile for better and advanced targeting.
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