The Impact of Price Discrepancies Across Channels on Consumers' Choice Deferral: The Role of Lay Belief About Price Discrepancies and Anticipated Regret

ABSTRACT With the rise of e‐commerce, offline retailers face significant challenges from online counterparts. The online low‐price advantage not only leads to the loss of offline customers but also makes offline customers hesitant and indecisive. In this research, we explore how the actual price discrepancies across channels, interacting with consumers' lay beliefs about these discrepancies and their anticipated regret, impact a novel downstream consumer decision: choice deferral. Across six studies involving one field study, we first show consumers generally believe the online price of the same product to be lower than its offline counterpart. We then demonstrate when actual online–offline price discrepancies contradict this prevailing belief, it results in decreased choice deferral in offline contexts, mediated by greater anticipated regret. Additionally, we highlight that the choice deferral effect induced by price discrepancy across channels is diminished among individuals who do not hold the general lay belief regarding the online–offline price discrepancy. Furthermore, individual differences in the valuation of transaction utility moderate this effect, such that the choice deferral likelihood is higher among individuals who place a high value on transaction utility. Our findings elucidate how consumers' beliefs about price discrepancies across channels influence purchasing decisions in an omnichannel market both theoretically and practically.