Anchoring and traffic effects in the virtual market platform of FIFA 20

An Internet-based competitive marketing game, FIFA 20, served toinvestigate the effectiveness of two opposite strategies insoccer-player auctions under semi-naturalistic conditions. Granting thevalidity of both causal principles, the anchoring principle giving anadvantage to starting with a high price (Ritov, 1996) and the trafficprinciple underlying the starting-low advantage (Ku, Galinsky, &Murnighan, 2006), we nevertheless expected starting low strategies toproduce higher endprices under FIFA 20 conditions. Two experiments, eachusing multiple copies of two players from the lowest price segment(Kramaric, Pizzi) and from an elevated price segment (Laporte, Martial),corroborated these expectations. A starting-low advantage was evident intwo utility aspects, enhanced average (profit) and reduced variance(uncertainty aversion) of end prices obtained for player copies offeredat lower starting prices. However, when the causal impact of themanipulated starting value was overshadowed by extraneous mediainfluences, these findings were reduced or disappeared but neverreversed.