RETAIL PRICE IMAGE MANAGING: THE ROLE OF HOUSEHLOD INCOME AND PRICE IMAGE LEVELS

The price image, as one aspect of the retailer's brand management, represents the overall prices in the retailer's assortment. Its importance raises from the large number of products in the assortment whose prices consumers can not remember. Therefore, price image and perception of prices can have strong influence on consumers regardless the actual prices. It can be assumed that retailer's price image is connected with monthly household income of consumers buying in its stores. Considering price image in a little more detail, retailers can manage it on a several levels - brand level (retailer), store level, category level and individual products level. The indicative research was conducted on the convenient sample of 305 households in Croatia in order to research consumers' perception on prices of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers and the role of household income and different levels of price image. Results suggest that retailers with the higher price image are more often chosen by the households with higher monthly income for the most often purchase. However, when it comes to retailers with lower price image, the households with various monthly income choose various retailers for the most often purchase. Thereby the important role have non price cues of price image. Furtherly, it has been shown that certain retailers build their price image on various levels among their loyal consumers and it can be assumed that targeted price image and store format has a significant role within it. Additionally, it suggests that retailers can differentiate themselves, not only by high or low price image, but by managing price image more carefully on the different levels in order to be in line with their general retail strategy.