DISC 321

Decision Behaviour | DISC 323 | Professor

Hassan Rauf | Project Deliverable 2

Group 5
22110033 Ahsan
Ishtiaq
22110285 Umar
Ahmad
22110085 Sheharyar
Malik
The objective of this research is to see the extent to which the anchors used in marketing in

the west applies to the Pakistani context as well. In order to carry out this research, a

literature review is being done, followed by a planned experiment.

Highlights of the literature review

The purpose of the literature review is to find out the different types of anchors

that marketers and sellers use which effect the buying decision of the consumer.

One of the noticeable anchors in the west is the usage of celebrities in endorsing

products, which act as anchors in the minds of the consumers. One of our

researched scholarly article mentions that there are three dimensions when it

comes to celebrity credibility: trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness.

This piece of information can help us dig deeper into the understanding of how

celebrities act as anchors in the mind of consumers.

Price also acts as an anchor. In the scholarly article that talked about price, an

experiment is discussed that talks about how a pamphlet of a famous and

expensive chocolate shown to the participants acted as anchors, which affected

how much willing they were to pay for the chocolate. This article can also give

us ideas regarding the design of our own experiment. In another research about

Price as an anchor, it was found that random numbers are used by consumers

that are available in the environment and then make numerical valuations.
An important area that we hope to explore and that is a more recent area of

interest for researchers is how the traditional anchors act in an online setting and

for e-commerce and how sellers leveraging AI and dynamic pricing and

advertising can manipulate anchors much more quickly and in a targeted

manner than ever before.

Likewise, we were able to find other scholarly pieces as well – in particular a

Review research article on anchoring bias. This would let us know a large

amount of work that is done in this topic.

The experiment

Our experiment could take either of two ways. One could be choosing a

particular organization (well-known brand) and designing all the anchors/biases

for our participants (who are also its users/potential users) in the context of that

brand. This method may be closer to reality and real buying decisions which are

affected by brand identity too.

The other method could be to use anchors for a general non-branded product. In

terms of anchor we can use all four Ps including the price, place, promotion,

product to test our participants responses

An even more creative approach could be designing two web-pages to test how

participants would react online but if this is not possible due to time and

resource constraints alternatives such as asking 2 different consumers to use an

e-commerce website/app simultaneously could be explored to deepen our

understanding of the interplay of anchors and consumer choices

The Interview

We are also planning to have an insightful interview regarding anchoring bias

with the marketing mangers of Shan Foods Limited. This will provide us with

detailed information about an applied approach towards the use of anchors in

Pakistani market. This would also give us the perspective of seller community

about this effect in our local community.

Because of time constraint and increasing rate of COVID-19, we would most

likely be using the online mode of communication for this interview. For future

reference, we plan to record it as per the permission of the interviewee.

Limitations

As Sir mentioned, this research is a course project rather than a senior year

project, and therefore we were recommended not to stretch the project too

much. Therefore, we fear that this research piece may only add a bit to the

existing literature. It is, however, true that despite a lot of work done on

anchoring bias and consumer behaviour, it has not been explored from a local

(Pakistani) context. Also this project explores just the working of anchors not

whether this has positive or negative consequences for consumers which may be

at risk/loss. This however is recommended as a subject for further research