Social Network-Based Discriminatory Pricing Strategy

In this paper we study such pricing practices like MCI's Friends and Family Program that employ price discriminations on the basis of callers' social ties. We characterize a consumer's personal communication network by the number of strong and weak ties that the consumer has. We then derive a consumer's demand for communication service from the structure of the consumer's personal communication network. A monopoly firm's social network-based discriminatory pricing strategy consists of a menu of price plans, each plan targeting at one type of social networks. Our paper provides useful guidelines for the design of optimal social network-based discriminatory pricing strategies. We show that a firm may offer price discounts to communications between friends and family members in order to extract a larger profit from communications between callers with weak ties.     

Retailer's decoy strategy versus consumers' reference price effect in a retailer-Stackelberg supply chain

Decoy strategy for bundling is an important marketing option because it can reflect the behavior resulting from consumers' reference price effect. This paper develops a game-theoretic model of a dyadic supply chain to study the joint decisions on pricing and decoy strategies in the presence of consumers' reference price effect. The retailer chooses one of the decoy strategies (phantom decoy-mixed bundling, decoy-mixed bundling) and selling prices to maximize her profit. Our study shows that: under both decoy strategies, the retailer and the manufacturer benefit from consumers' low reference price effect; however, the high reference price effect hurts their profits.     

Why offer lower prices to past customers? Inducing favorable social price comparisons to enhance customer retention

Price discrimination policies vary widely across companies. Some firms offer new customers the lowest price; others give preferential prices to their past customers. We contribute to the literature on price discrimination in behavior-based pricing by exploring how customers’ social price comparisons, i.e., comparing one’s price to that received by similar peers, impact the optimal structure of price discrimination. Social price comparisons have a negative (positive) impact on customers’ transaction utility if the price charged to past customers is higher (lower) than a new customer’s price. Using an analytical model with vertically differentiated firms, we show that a firm with relatively large market share will reward its past customers with relatively low prices when social price comparisons have a sufficiently large impact on utility. Furthermore, we find that social price comparisons lead to a relaxation of the price competition for new customers. Thus, both firms can earn higher profits when such comparisons are made than when they are absent. We also examine how other factors, such as horizontal competition and strategic customers, interact with social price comparison concerns to impact pricing strategies. Finally, we show how pricing behavior differs when price comparisons are based on historic reference prices rather than on peers’ prices.     

Monopoly Pricing of Social Goods

We analyse the roles of network connectivity and topology on the monopoly pricing of network goods which enable social interaction between consumers. Connectivity between network members induces the well-known network externalities effect, while the topological effect is caused by the incompleteness of the social network’s linkage, and it has not been previously recognised in this context. We find that the topological effect counteracts, and dominates, the connectivity effect by reducing the monopoly’s capacity to extract consumer surplus. Our results are seen to hold in real cases of social network businesses. The monopolist benefits from price discrimination based on consumers’ social connections, but this has a social cost as consumer surplus loss is higher than the increase in profits, with the highly connected consumers being the primary losers. Therefore, privacy policies restricting excessive social profiling and tracking can have an antitrust role too. Our approach also extends the theory of multi-sided markets in relation to the underlying relations graph of different market sides.     

The impact of household level heterogeneity in reference price effects on optimal retailer pricing policies

The field of marketing has witnessed substantial improvement in modeling household level heterogeneity. However, relatively little has been written about how modeling household heterogeneity translates into better marketing decisions. In this paper, we study the impact of household level heterogeneity in reference price effects on a retailer's pricing policy. Reference prices are certain anchors or standards that households use to compare the observed purchase price of a product against. If the observed price is greater than the reference price it is perceived as a “loss” and if it is smaller than the reference price it is perceived as a “gain”. In order to study the impact of heterogeneity in reference price effects on retail pricing, we test a nested logit model under two alternative reference price (memory and stimulus based) and heterogeneity (finite mixture and hierarchical Bayes) specifications. In the empirical analysis, we find that households are quite heterogeneous in terms of their gain and loss effects. For some households a gain has higher impact than a corresponding loss, while the opposite is true for others. Using individual level estimates we then develop a normative pricing policy for a retailer maximizing category profit. Our results indicate that the optimal pricing policy derived from the heterogeneous case is qualitatively different, and more profitable, than the case when heterogeneity is ignored. We show that for an important marketing problem pertaining to a retailer, the optimal pricing decisions for various brands in a category are inextricably related to household heterogeneity in reference effects and brand preference.     

Economic Benefits of Renting Software

In this article, we analyze the economics of a monopoly firm selling and renting a packaged software product by employing an intertemporal monopoly pricing game to model the firm's pricing strategy. The game models the software product as two versions; the first version is available in the first period and the second, a revised version, is available in the second period. The second version benefits from consumer reports of bugs and requests for additional features. This is modeled using delayed network externalities that take effect only in the second period. We observe that the introduction of the rental product in the first period leads to an increase in profits. We also find that the firm's profits are monotonically increasing with the intensity of the network effect. As the intensity of the network effect becomes stronger, the firm chooses to reduce its prices in the first period to expand the size of its network and later increases prices in the second period. Because many of the customers who choose to rent in the first period subsequently make a purchase in the second period, the firm is able to capture the benefits of network externalities in the first period without reducing sales in the second period. For high levels of network intensity, consumer surplus and social welfare are also higher.     

Increasing Price Transparency: Implications of Consumer Price Posting for Consumers' Haggling Behavior and a Seller's Pricing Strategies

In an attempt to gain a better position in haggling, consumers often seek a seller's pricing information (e.g., whether the posted price is negotiable, the discount and transaction prices) before going to that seller. Although traditionally difficult to obtain, such information is becoming increasingly available due to consumer price posting (CPP), whereby consumers post and share their purchase price information on the Internet. In this analytical study, we consider a market in which a seller, who chooses between a fixed price policy and a haggling policy, serves two types of consumers who differ in their willingness to pay and haggling costs. We explore how CPP can affect consumers' behavior and the seller's pricing strategies (i.e., pricing policy and the associated prices). In the absence of CPP, our model features a two-sided uncertainty: the seller does not know individual consumer's type and thus may find it optimal to use a haggling policy to price discriminate consumers, whereas consumers do not readily observe the seller's cost type and pricing policy, and thus are uncertain whether their haggling will be fruitful. In the presence of CPP, consumers' uncertainty about the seller's pricing policy is resolved. Because CPP can improve price transparency, inhibit consumers' acceptance of a posted price and spur price haggling, it seems apparent that it should benefit consumers and hurt the seller. However, our analysis shows that CPP can lead to fewer purchases, higher prices and even a greater seller profit. It further shows that although CPP surely increases information accessibility, it can also reduce the amount of information available to consumers. These results are in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom in the literature.     

基于双边市场理论的物流信息平台定价策略研究

面向车货匹配的物流信息平台具有典型的双边市场特征,而价格是物流信息平台与其双边用户货主和车主利益博弈的主要工具。本文运用双边市场理论分析了物流信息平台的定价问题。文章分别从垄断平台双边定价和单边定价的角度给出了物流信息平台最优定价决策,并进行了对比分析和敏感性分析,最后扩展到竞争平台的定价决策。通过建模分析发现,物流信息平台对货主的定价与货主的网络效应强度有关,当货主的网络效应强度大于车主的网络效应时对货主收费,否则对货主免费或补贴;物流信息平台对于车主的定价与车主的增值服务效益成负相关关系,当车主为平台带来的增值服务收益大于某临界值时对车主免费甚至补贴;物流信息平台单边收费时的总利润低于双边收费时的平台总利润。最后结合我国车货匹配市场,以某物流信息平台为对象进行了案例分析。     

Uniform or spatially differentiated? Pricing Strategies for Information Goods under simultaneous and sequential decision-making in multi-market context

Product pricing has been one of the central issues in the field of marketing and consumer services for managers and researchers alike. However, pricing of information goods has not been paid much attention in literature. For information goods the marginal costs of production and transportation of information goods (online movies, video games, etc.) is almost zero. Hence, the pricing decisions need to be thought of purely in competitive profit maximizing terms. This paper proposes mechanisms for managers to evaluate and base their pricing decisions on rational frameworks that takes into account various situations when they enter a new market and when they are incumbent in a new market. This paper addresses the research gap of spatially differentiated pricing strategy for information goods that has not been studied in literature so far. We create stylized theoretical models under both, sequential and simultaneous decision-making conditions. We determine the equilibrium price and the equilibrium profit for the two firms for each of the four possible scenarios based on their pricing strategies. Our analysis reveals that the dominance of one pricing strategy over the other depends on product differentiation factor capturing joint effect of the product substitutability and consumer's price sensitivity under sequential decision making and the market size along with consumer's price sensitivity for simultaneous decision making. As an extension, we propose a generalized model demonstrating the uniform and spatially differentiated pricing strategies of the firms under simultaneous and sequential selection for multiple domestic and international markets.     

Pricing policies and ownership of shares as substitutes for vertical integration

The study investigates short-run pricing policies of a firm which is a monopoly in an input and also owns shares in an industry in which the monopolized input is employed. The model is a “partial” vertical integration model in the sense that there is no direct intervention by the monopoly in the industry's production and marketing decisions. The interesting results of the study are that the price to be set by the monopoly should correspond to an equality or a linear relation between the elasticity of demand for the input and the percentage of shares not owned by the monopoly.     

空间竞争、房价收入比与房价

本文通过构建一个房地产市场空间竞争模型,分别就Cournot竞争和价格合谋情形,探讨了开发商的位置及其密度如何影响均衡开发量、房价和社会福利.本文的基本结论是:空间竞争决定了房价,而非房价收入比;市场决定的价格不一定为合理性价格;房价与市中心距离和开发商密度成反比;空间垄断是房价刚性的根本原因.因此,要将刚性房价降下来,政府一方面应将大项目拆分为小项目,促进竞争,另一方面应对空间垄断进行管制.     

EDITOR'S COMMENTS

ABSTRACT

The key to improving pricing methods lies in establishing a clear relationship between the price paid by customers and the value received. A company's understanding of how a decision in its pricing policy will affect the perceptions its potential consumers will have of these prices, is fundamental if it wishes to make sure that its offer is properly perceived. Thus, if companies identify the rules used by purchasers to price their products, they will be successful in getting the objective signal they send via their communication strategies to be perceived in the desired manner. This analysis shows that both monetary and non-monetary costs are considered by consumers when determining the final cost perception associated with the acquisition of a good, and that the understanding of the internal reference price is essential for determining the nominal price effect on the monetary component of total sacrifice.     

On The Reference Point Effect of Reserve and Buy It Now Prices

In recent years, a trend in retail pricing has been to give consumers greater autonomy in setting their own prices, be it through auctions or other forms of participative pricing. Such consumer pricing autonomy often requires the seller to set limits in the form of price floors and price ceilings. Price floors and ceilings in our auction settings are referred to as reserve prices (RP) and Buy It Now (BIN) prices, respectively. We examine the effect of RP and BIN presence and magnitude on the number of bidders and ending price. Using auctions, we uncover consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) through bids. WTP is malleable through reference cues. Our focus is on two such cues: BINs and RPs. Results of two field studies, augmented with a laboratory study, show that both BINs and RPs result in lower bidder entry, but have an overall positive effect on ending price. Furthermore, results show that RP is more effective than a comparable BIN magnitude and that these two pricing cues are substitutes. The study design allows the authors to rule out alternative explanations. Open RP and BIN's effect on ending price is due to a reference point effect rather than a price truncation effect. Thus, retailers can increase WTP through changing these reference cues and exploit a richer choice set over which to shape a malleable WTP. The quantification of the interaction between RP and BIN gives managers the ability to jointly take advantage of both RP and BIN.     

A dynamic model of reference price and expected quality

A number of recent papers have developed normative implications of the concept of reference price. In this paper, we extend that literature to incorporate the relationship between expected quality and reference price. We consider the case of a monopolist who makes time-varying decisions regarding price and product quality. Our results suggest that when the effect of a loss (price greater than reference price and product quality less than expected quality) on demand is greater than or equal to that of a corresponding gain, it is optimal for a monopolist to have constant price and product quality levels. When the effect of a gain on demand is greater than that of a corresponding loss, however, we find that it is optimal to maintain cyclical pricing and product quality policies.     

Compete in Price or Service?—A Study of Personalized Pricing and Money Back Guarantees

Retailers use both pricing and service strategies to respond to intensified competition. Here we develop a duopoly model to investigate the impact of the increasingly popular personalized pricing strategy (PPS) and the widely used Money Back Guarantee (MBG) customer returns policy. We consider two retailers who differ in customer satisfaction rates. Each retailer chooses a pricing strategy, PPS or uniform pricing, and a product return strategy, MBG or ‘no returns.’ We show that both PPS and MBG are dominant strategies, but their impact on retailers’ prices and profits are different; while PPS intensifies price competition and may lead to a prisoner’s dilemma in which both retailers may lose profit, MBG mitigates price competition and may result in a Pareto improvement in both retailers’ profits. Both PPS and MBG increase the size of the overall market, but not the total duopoly profit. The total customer surplus and social welfare may increase under either strategy. In addition, we obtain some interesting observations as to how our results may change if the product quality/customer satisfaction rate is endogenously chosen in the duopoly. Some of our findings are in contrast to related results reported in the literature.     

Optimal criteria for selecting price discrimination metrics when buyers have log-normally distributed willingness-to-pay

This paper investigates how a monopoly seller should determine the optimal set of pricing variables (pricing metrics) for third-degree price discrimination applications in which buyers have log-normally distributed willingness-to-pay (WTP). In a setup that closely resembles linear and probit regressions, this paper shows that when the monopoly seller is restricted to using one metric and no price discrimination cost exists, the pricing metric that best reduces the residual variance of buyers’ willingness-to-pay is the one that maximizes revenue. Equivalently, the explanatory power of willingness-to-pay is the ordering criterion. This paper also shows that this criterion is not universally true when willingness-to-pay follows other distributions. When the seller incurs price discrimination costs associated with different metrics, the ordering criterion becomes the explanatory power of each pricing metric divided by its cost. This paper also discusses how to apply this model to solve real-world pricing problems with contingent valuation models or using probit regression.

Mixed pricing in online marketplaces

A rich theory literature predicts mixed strategies in posted prices due to standard price discrimination, search frictions, and various other rationales. While typically interpreted as implying occasional sales or price dispersion, online marketplaces enable a firm to truly use randomization as a tool in pricing, and so such behavior should be expected to arise in online settings. We investigate a case of mixed pricing across a large subset of products on a major e-commerce website. We first test for randomizing behavior, and then construct a model of price discrimination that would generate randomization as optimal behavior. We estimate the model and use it to assess pricing effects of a proposed merger in the industry.     

What drives brands’ price response metrics? An empirical examination of the Chinese packaged goods industry

As competition among CPG brands intensifies in both emerging and developed markets, brand managers increasingly focus on price as the weapon-of-choice. This calls for an assessment of not only their own price response, but also of their competitive pricing power, and its antecedents. The authors propose a set of universally applicable ('etic') and country-specific ('emic') drivers of brand price elasticity, clout, and vulnerability, for the world’s largest emerging market (viz., China). Leveraging a unique and large-scale data set from this market, they find that high price response is not necessarily indicative of high clout, nor does it signal high vulnerability. Hence, all three price response metrics matter. They also uncover marked differences in the impact of brand- and category-level drivers on these three metrics. Established etic factors such as line length, distribution intensity, and stockpilability have a substantial effect on one or more price response metrics. Among the emic factors, Chinese embeddedness, and especially social demonstrance play an important role: it strongly drives down brands’ price elasticity, but also reduces the intensity of price competition in the category and makes brands less vulnerable to rival actions. Foreign brands, in contrast, exhibit higher price response, and do not enjoy higher clout nor lower vulnerability than their domestic counterparts. Hence, they neither benefit from the aura, nor suffer from the liability, of foreignness. Overall, the study adds to empirical generalizations on the impact of price, and helps managers improve the effectiveness of their pricing strategies.     

A two-generation new product model by considering forward-looking customers: Dynamic pricing and advertising optimization

Nowadays, one of the challenges of the firm managing multi-generation products is the forward-looking behavior of customers. Anticipating the introduction of a newer generation affects the demand and sales volume of the current generation and next generation. In this research, we investigated how to efficiently structure the pricing and advertising strategies of a firm that launches a two-generation new product to a market populated by forward-looking customers. Two thresholds were determined on the advertising expenditure of Generations 1 and 2. Our analysis proposed that the optimal pricing path of Generation 1 was monotonically decreasing or increasing and, then, decreasing. The optimal pricing of Generation 2 followed a concave curve. A heuristic solution method was proposed to solve the numerical examples. Findings revealed that, with increasing the customers' forward-looking behavior, the firm's profit would decrease. In the presence of forward-looking customers, it is beneficial for the firm to reduce the price of Generation 1 and allocate more budget to advertise Generation 2. Among other results, the advertising expenditure was shown to be positively affected by the number of potential customers and advertising effectiveness. Also, the length of the planning horizon had a negative effect on the advertising expenditure. A higher discount rate could lead to lower price, while higher advertising effectiveness and length of the planning horizon would result in higher price. Further, the results showed that, with increasing the word-of-mouth advertising effectiveness, the firm should increase the advertising expenditure and decrease the price firstly and, afterwards, decrease the advertising effort and increase the price.