Opposing effects of sociodemographic variables on price knowledge

This paper examines the impact of sociodemographic variables (age, income, and occupation) on price memory. We argue that these variables may exert opposing effects on ability and motivation to process price information, explaining why prior literature has found inconclusive effects of sociodemographics on price knowledge. To tease apart the influence of ability and motivation on price processing, we report the results of a field experiment among 683 shoppers manipulating an ability-related variable (familiar or unfamiliar currency) and a motivation-related variable (normal or 50 % higher prices), and we measure willingness and accuracy to recall and recognize prices as a function of consumers’ age, income, and occupation. We find that consumers with the sociodemographic drivers of lower ability but higher motivation (older, less affluent, and lower occupational categories) have worse price memory, especially when the prices are expressed in an unfamiliar currency (the ability-related manipulation).