Abstract

The present study examined whether purchase intention would be different when people had the same amount of money, but money was either in small (ten ￦10,000 bills) or large denomination (a ￦100,000 bill). Mishra et al. (2006) reported 'the bias for the whole', wherein money in the form of a whole (large denomination) was valued more than equivalent amounts of money in the form of parts (small denominations). According to this bias, purchase intention would be low regardless of product prices when people have a large denomination bill. Instead of this bias, however, the results of the present study demonstrated matching responses, wherein people showed high purchase intention as the price of a product matched the denomination of a bill. These results were replicated in three studies. We provided possible psychological mechanisms for this matching response phenomenon. Our results suggest that once a large denomination bill is issued, products with similar prices might sell more.