Identifying All the Types of Consumption Experiences and Their Impact on Perceptions of Prices

Investigating previous researches shows that changes in the marketing approach of organizations have shifted from traditional attributes and benefits to the approach of creating experiences for consumers. Actually, this new approach is based on the fact that consumers' lives are largely influenced by their experiences before, during, and after purchasing and consuming products and services from different organizations and producers. The purpose of the present study is to identify the nature of different types of consumption experiences and to examine their effects on perceptions of prices.

The present research is considered as a mixed research in terms of the method. The required data were obtained within two stages. In the first step, the Q method was used to systematically analyze the individuals’ mental structure regarding different types of consumption experiences, and in fact to identify different types of mental structures regarding consumption experiences. In the second step, a questionnaire was used to collect the data required to examine the impact of different types of consumption experiences on perceptions of prices. The statistical population of this study includes all the students of Shahid Beheshti University who are using mobile phones.

Based on the findings of the study, it was assumed that in addition to attachment experiences, other experiences of using mobile phones including relational-oriented experiences, searching experiences, and inoculated experiences were significantly (at 99%) affective on Shahid Beheshti University students.

People with relationship-oriented experiences believed that the type of mobile phone affects their credibility and reputation; therefore, they reasonably buy mobile phones that are just more expensive. These people were satisfied with the performance of their mobile phone and. On the other hand, because of the relationship-oriented issue suggesting that they had a tendency to buy more expensive mobile phones, it can therefore be argued that their previous experiences would form price-quality perceptions among them. Besides, people with searching experiences have realized that they need to spend more time gathering relevant information to make a successful purchase, after going through relatively unsuccessful experiences with their mobile phones. Therefore, because of such experiences, they would generally try to make decisions based on logic, rather than emotions and intuitive factors. This is the reason why those with these kinds of experiences increase negative perceptions of price and decrease positive perceptions within themselves. The participants within the inoculated experience group would place the least importance on mobile phones. In fact it can be argued that these people do not pay much attention to their mobile phone brand and model and only consider it as a means of communication and nothing more. So, they don't intend to pay much money for mobile phones. Finally, the impact of attachment experiences on building positive and negative perceptions of price has not been approved. That is, it can be argued that their consumption experiences were based on the useful purchase values ​​they gained from their mobile phones. Hence, these people don't pay much attention to the price of their mobile phone.