Ancoragem: uma replicação sistemática de Luppe e de Angelo (2010) e uma interpretação analítico-comportamental dos resultados

Abstract

Consumer behavior is understood as a chain of responses under operant control and, among them, price assessment may be included. Anchoring studies by behavioral economics indicate that estimate of values, including price assessment, may be affected by the presentation of an antecedent stimulus, called anchor. This research investigated price assessment behavior as a possible precurrent behavior of a final purchase. For this, the Luppe and de Angelo’s (2010) anchoring study was replicated, with the inclusion of three items among six from the original study and the introduction of a questionnaire to investigate the accuracy of participants regarding the cost of living assessment in São Paulo, Brazil, from of a set of selected items. The participants were psychology students in the city of São Paulo, over 18 years old. The results did not allow us to conclude if there is a relation between the degree of anchor control in price assessments and the participants’ accuracy in assessing the selected cost of living items. We suggest further investigations of this relations through studies with groups of participants with heterogeneous profiles, for example, different social classes, or investigation of the hypothesis that the anchor stimulus control over the price assessment response is due to a history in which making a closer estimate to the real value produces reinforcing consequences of “giving the right answer”, with conditional discriminatory stimulus function