Chinese consumers´ perception of price fairness to state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises

The current study was based on Kahneman (1986) and Campbell (1999) to investigate Chinese consumers\´ price fairness, by introducing a new variable, that is the nature of the enterprise ownership, to investigate whether people\´s feeling of fairness between state- and non state-owned firms\´ price change differ. The study included three parts, which were "Fairness perception on price raising due to cost increasing v. s. demand increasing", "Fairness perception on price keeping stable while cost decreasing" and "Fairness perception on auction in shortage of goods with auction intention out of public interests or not". We varied the nature of the firms (state-owned, monopoly, non-state-owned) as independent variable. Results showed that subjects tended to accept the price raising based on cost increasing, perceiving it as fair, they tended not to accept price raising based on demand increasing; After price raising due to cost increasing, it was regarded as unfair if the price kept high when cost decreased. Subjects wouldn\´t accept auction in shortage of goods, regarding it as unfair. For firms with good fame, subjects have stronger feeling of unfairness on their auction behavior. But if the auction was due to public interests, instead of maximizing its profit, subjects thought it acceptable.