Rethinking Rationality in Price Determination: A Study of the Process of Price Anchoring in the Unorganized Sector of India.

This paper studies the practices of price-anchoring in the unorganized sector in India through the following research questions: How do factors such as nature of markets, patterns of ownership, footfall and product differentiation have an impact on the effects of price-anchoring in the everyday purchase? How does the autonomy of the seller to anchor prices gets impacted by the agency of the customer? Behavioural Economics has postulated that people tend have cognitive biases in evaluating satisfactory value of a purchase according to their rationality [1]. In the unorganized sector, this rationality is dynamic and interactive. Based on vast data collected from the field, this paper explores how subjective experiences of the seller and the consumer together constitute differential practices in price-anchoring. The attempt is to explore the sociological underpinnings of rationality in price-anchoring in the everyday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]