Consumer price perceptions after translation to Euro currency

The membership in the European Union (EU) affected price perceptions of citizens in many European countries at the beginning of 2002. How did the transition from the national currency to the Euro, the new single currency of EU, actually take place? Examines the confusion among Finnish consumers concerning internal reference prices in different product and service categories immediately after the transition to the Euro. Proposes tentatively and empirically tests a framework model. Provides the relationships between the paper's key constructs of consumer price perception and some attitudinal and behavioral variables shortly after transition to Euro currency. Basically price perception took place in similar way, when Markka and Euro scales were utilized. This result was shown, first, by analyzing price perception strategies of consumers, and, second, by showing with correlation analysis that as internal reference price increases, the width of price latitude increases, and, third, by modelling reference price perception on the basis of Volkmann's range theory. Money illusion effect was found to exist to some extent.