Determinants of willingness to pay in separate and joint evaluations of options: Context matters

Consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) can be higher for items that are objectively worse than others when it is difficult to evaluate them comparatively on the relevant dimensions. However, it is unclear how the ease of evaluation affects WTP. In order to investigate the antecedents of WTP, we showed participants an underfilled and an overfilled cup containing the same amount of ice cream or orange juice. We asked them to state their WTP and to report how much they liked the servings (Experiment 1) and how large they judged them to be (Experiment 2). When participants could not evaluate the two cups comparatively, they regarded the overfilled one as fuller and they were willing to pay more for it. This replicates previous work. We also found that, regardless of mode of presentation and cup filling, the desirability of the servings and their perceived size both determined the WTP. However, they did so only when these judgements were made explicitly. This suggests that the influence of product features on WTP depends on their being made salient and that this can be done by asking consumers about them.