(A Research on the Investigation of Consumers’ Thoughts and Behaviors against Unethical Pricing Practices)

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this research is to reveal the opinions of consumers towards various pricing policies that performed by companies. Accordingly, unethical pricing practices which are shelf and cash register price mismatch, excessive pricing, discounted pricing, bait and switch pricing, odd-ending pricing and price differentiation were examined. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative and quantitative methods were used together in this research. In the qualitative context, 6 scenarios were generated to cover the relevant unethical pricing practices; the respondents' thoughts about these scenarios were tried to be obtained and coding method was used in the analysis of the obtained thoughts. In the quantitative context, a questionnaire was structured and used as a data collection tool. Additionally, some questions were utilized as well to measure the awareness of consumers about their rights in such cases. The questionnaire was performed in May 2019; 529 of 548 questionnaires were found to be suitable for analysis. Findings: According to the findings, it is seen that consumers find the pricing practices unethical, deceptive, and cause negative attitudes towards companies and decrease their loyalty. When consumers are exposed to unethical pricing practices they generally tend to react and complain, but mostly from a traditional way. At the point of complaining, consumer awareness about what legal channels are and how to use them is very low. Discussion – Consumers believe that they are deceived by unethical pricing practices performed by companies in general. Negative perceptions lead to negative attitudes towards firms, to overlook the retention of customers which are very important in today's competitive market, and to never reach potential customers.