Unit Pricing Empirical Investigations of its Influences at the Product and Retailer Levels

With a series of experiments, Lena Himbert highlights the influence of the unit price’s unit of measure on the consumer’s price-level perception and quality perception. Furthermore, this thesis shows that the unit price availability and prominence influences the consumer’s store price image. When shopping for pre-packaged products, consumers are offered a variety of product and price information at the point of purchase. The unit price represents price information given to the consumer for which the factor package size is removed and thereby lowers the information load for consumers in the shopping situation. However, retailers have considerable leeway concerning the unit price format. Aspects that can be varied are for example the unit of measure (e.g., price per kg vs price per 100 g) or font size. There is little to no previous research that gives advice to retailers how they should indicate the unit price on the price label.