Interesting Results
Showing Competitors’ Prices
The Web makes it easy to compare vendors’ prices, and one recently published study examined what happens when the vendors themselves make this information available (rather than forcing the buyer to look at several Web sites or visit a site that specializes in product and price comparisons). An experiment revealed that showing competitors’ prices increases buyer trust in the site showing the comparative prices and that increased trustworthiness leads to an increase in the proportion of people choosing that site for future purchases. This effect was most pronounced for sites whose prices were neither consistently above nor below those of its competitors, but rather sometimes higher and sometimes lower.