The Priming Effects of Relevant and Irrelevant Advertising in Online Auctions

Individuals' bidding behavior in online auctions has been the subject of research in multiple disciplines. Most prior bidding research has focused on deliberate rational cognition, yet recent research in psychology suggests that much of human behavior is influenced by non-conscious automatic cognition. One technique that has been shown to influence non-conscious cognition is priming, the presentation of stimuli intended to activate certain concepts in working memory prior to the task of interest. In this paper, we develop a new form of priming, which we call concurrent priming, in which the stimuli are delivered during the task itself. We conducted three experiments to investigate the impact of concurrent priming delivered through what appeared to be advertisements on individuals' willingness to pay in online auctions. We found that the priming advertisement significantly influenced the bid amount but the impact was reduced when the product had a manufacturer's suggested retail price.