SOME ANTECEDENTS OF PRICE SENSITIVITY.

Consumer price sensitivity is important to marketing theory and practice because of its impact on profitability. This paper presents a model containing four important antecedents of price sensitivity. Previous studies show that enduring product involvement, consumer innovativeness, perceived brand parity, and attitudinal brand loyalty separately influence price sensitivity. This paper presents a model showing how these four antecedents interact. The model fits data from two separate samples of U.S. consumers (n = 156 and 305) and accounts for a substantial proportion of the variance in price sensitivity. Price sensitivity is positively related to perceived brand parity and negatively related to involvement, innovativeness, and loyalty. Innovativeness, brand parity, and brand loyalty appear to mediate the influence of involvement on price sensitivity, thereby partially explaining the psychological linkages between these distinct concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]