Empirical Generalizations About the Impact of Advertising on Price Sensitivity and Price

Consumers' sensitivities to price changes are an important input to strategic and tactical decisions. It has been argued that price sensitivities depend on factors such as advertising. Prior studies on the effect of advertising on consumer price sensitivity have found seemingly conflicting results. We analyze the characteristics of previous studies in marketing and generate a set of three empirical generalizations. These are (1) an increase in price advertising leads to higher price sensitivity among consumers, (2) the use of price advertising leads to lower prices, and (3) an increase in nonprice advertising leads to lower price sensitivity among consumers. These generalizations have important implications for managers and researchers. Managers need to coordinate their advertising and pricing decisions to attain maximum profits. For researchers, our summary and discussion of empirical results provide directions for future.