Persuasion Strategies, Heuristics, and Decision Biases in Managerial Pricing Decisions: Evidence from Sabah’s Hotel Industry
Abstract
is study investigates how persuasion strategies, heuristics, and cognitive biases shape managerial pricing decisions within Sabah’s hotel industry. Integrating perspectives from social psychology and behavioural marketing, it explores how anchoring, framing, and reference dependence influence revenue managers’ promotional choices, discount structures, and consumer perceptions. Using a qualitative exploratory design, the study draws on in-depth interviews with hotel managers from Kota Kinabalu, Kundasang, and Sandakan to capture their intuitive and analytical pricing behaviours. Findings reveal that managerial decisions are heavily influenced by anchoring on historical price points, gain–loss framing in promotional messages, and emotional heuristics under competitive and seasonal stress. While these cognitive shortcuts often enhance persuasion effectiveness, they also generate systematic pricing distortions and inconsistent consumer experiences. The paper proposes a behavioural pricing framework linking managerial cognition, heuristic persuasion, and consumer response, offering both theoretical advancement and practical insights for ethically informed, evidence-based pricing strategies in Sabah’s hospitality sector.
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