Pricing practices: A critical review of their effects on consumer perceptions and behaviour

With the present challenge to compete on price or product assortment, retailers and manufacturers are increasingly focusing on state-of-the-art pricing strategies which have their roots in behavioural economics and psychology. The current review is an empirical investigation on the relative effectiveness of various pricing practices on consumer perceptions and behaviour. Six pricing strategies were reviewed; drip pricing, reference pricing, the use of the word ‘free’, bait pricing, bundling and time-limited offers. The review shows that the former three have received a significant amount of attention and have a robust impact on consumer perceptions and behaviour. There is less research on the latter three; however, the available evidence does suggest that they, too, may be capable of influencing consumers’ choices. Finally, it is also clear that the effects of pricing practices can be moderated by a variety of factors. Overall, the current review indicates that sellers are able to influence perceptions and purchase decisions of consumers based on the manner in which prices are displayed. The implications of these findings for retailers, policy makers and researchers are discussed.     

房价与地价关系研究:模型及中国数据检验

本文通过构建一个线形城市的住房市场和土地市场模型,分别就Cournot空间竞争和规制情形,探讨了房价和地价关系.本文的基本结论是:规制情形下的房价和地价高于无规制情形下的房价和地价;在供大于求时,房价与地价成线性负相关关系;在供小于求时,房价与地价成线性正相关关系;房价与地价Granger因果关系检验表明,短期内房价和地价相互影响,长期内地价是房价的Granger因.因此,要将房价降下来,短期内,一方面应增加土地供给,另一方面应控制房价和地价过快上涨;在长期,主要应抑制地价的过快上涨.     

A Comparison of Bundling and Sequential Pricing in Competitive Markets: Experimental Evidence

Technological advances enable sellers to identify relationships among offered goods. Sellers can leverage this information through pricing strategies such as bundling and sequential pricing. While these strategies have primarily been studied under monopoly assumptions, the strategies are available to competitive firms as well. This paper reports on a series of laboratory experiments comparing bundling and sequential pricing while varying the underlying relationship between the goods in markets where a fraction of buyers comparison shop. The results indicate that sequential pricing is generally as profitable to the seller; however, there is evidence that sequential pricing may be more harmful to consumers than bundling when the goods have complementary values or the buyer’s values are positively correlated.     

Pricing by intuition: Managerial choices with limited information

In making pricing decisions, managers can chose from several pricing strategies. To ensure long-term business success, pricing choices need to balance numerous requirements, from revenue streams to keeping customers happy. The complexity of pricing decisions and time pressures that often accompany them prompt the need for fast, simplified decision algorithms. The present exploratory study examines the ways in which considerations of price fairness and competitive strategy combine in managers' decisions regarding the price level.     

Pricing as a driver of profitable growth: An agenda for CEOs and senior executives

Most CEOs take a narrow, tactical view of pricing and delegate pricing to lower levels of the organization. This myopic approach is costly, as it prevents companies from realizing their potential. In the hands of the best-run companies, pricing is not a battlefield tactic to win a particular competitive skirmish but a transformative long-term strategy for sustained competitive advantage. We present an agenda of six specific action items that defines how to unlock the power of pricing. CEOs and senior executives, our research suggests, should not set prices, but instead, they should create the context, the capabilities, the behaviors, the infrastructure, and the aspirations that enable their organization to excel in pricing.     

Effects of pricing and promotion on consumer perceptions: it depends on how you frame it

This research examined the extent to which different promotional frames increased perceptions of deal value. Price discounts dominate the sales promotions employed by marketers. The framing literature suggests discounts have robust positive effects on consumer perceptions of deal value. However, the current research showed that negative quality inferences moderated discount framing effects and undermined deal value, particularly when no assurance of product quality was provided. Every-day-low-price offers were also vulnerable to negative quality inferences, while free gift frames maintained quality perceptions and increased deal value. Product trial acted to further magnify promotional framing effects, according to a confirmation bias. These findings were consistent with an attribute framing mechanism.     

Feed them facts: Value perceptions and consumer use of sustainability-related product information

More than ever, consumers are demanding sustainable options on retail shelves. Retailers, however, are not finding clear evidence of the financial benefits for doing so. This study attempts to provide concrete suggestions to retailers on what kinds of sustainability-related information to provide to consumers. Our online study of approximately 3600 participants provides evidence that, when provided with full information on all sustainability-related attributes, consumers make price/benefit trade-offs resulting in the selection of higher priced, more value-differentiated products. Further, when sustainability-related information is provided for some products and not for others, consumers will “punish” the non-sustainable option. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Profiling the reference price consumer

Researchers in marketing have devoted considerable attention to understanding how price impacts the purchase decision. Some individuals, termed memory-based reference price (MBR) consumers, take into account price expectations developed from past purchase behavior when making a current choice. Other individuals, termed stimulus-based reference price (SBR) consumers, make choices by constructing a reference point from the currently observed distribution of prices. Using a latent class model of structural heterogeneity applied to purchase histories from the toilet tissue category, we classify households in terms of the pricing mechanism used in buying decisions. We find strong evidence that memory-based (internal) reference price consumers are more price sensitive than other consumers. Moreover, we find that variables associated with the accessibility of price information are predictive of consumer use of memory-based reference prices. Managerial implications of these results are discussed.     

The Determinants of Pricing Strategies for Industrial Products in International Markets

ABSTRACT

The global marketplace is becoming increasingly complex in which to conduct business. Firms marketing consumer goods have a somewhat easier time than those selling industrial products, since more has been written about them and the international consumer goods have been analyzed for a longer period of time. In addition, the international marketing literature, has looked more at the elements of product, promotion and place than price. This literature gap has created a void in the understanding of marketers as to how to effectively price industrial products in international markets.

The paper identifies the important industrial pricing strategies in international marketing and examines the underlying determinants that affect their outcome. In addition, the specific causal relationships between the determinants and pricing strategies are examined through a logistic regression analysis.     

Product category determinants of price knowledge for durable consumer goods

Existing research in pricing has not extensively examined the impact of the product category on consumers’ knowledge of prices, especially for durable goods. In two empirical studies, this paper examines the influence of the product category on consumers’ knowledge of prices for durables. The first study utilizes data from the popular television game show The Price is Right to establish significant cross-category variations in price knowledge, while the second study links these variations to the specific characteristics of each product category. The results extend existing research findings by isolating the impact of product category determinants, such as purchase frequency, advertising exposure, and use of the price-quality cue, on consumers’ knowledge of prices.     

Managerial perspectives on trade and consumer promotions

Understanding the perceptions of managers and the behavioral rules they employ in allocating marketing resources is important in applied research. Using survey data obtained from brand managers, this paper explores the factors managers consider important in allocating trade and consumer promotions. Importance scores on several dimensions are factor analyzed to extract the underlying factors. Indices are computed using these raw scores. The extent of mediation by several brand and category variables on managerial perceptions are then examined by correlating managers' indices and the structural variables. The impact of the structural variables and the importance scores are related to promotion to sales ratios in a regression model. While the structural variables have strong and predictable impact, the importance scores are somewhat weak in their explanatory power. These results are used to shed some light on the budgeting process of allocating marketing dollars among advertising trade and consumer promotions.     

Pricing Experience Goods in Information Good Markets: The Case of eBusiness Service Providers

We study the pricing strategies of firms providing a service in experience good markets with switching costs. Using data on vendors providing “hosting and related services” at an early stage of the market, we test for pricing distortions that follow from oligopolistic competition with quality uncertainty and switching costs. We find that firms with a brand name charge a premium for their product – leveraging the reputation accumulated in closely related markets. As the theoretical literature suggests, we also find that the type of pricing distortions along the product line depends on consumers’ expectations about quality. If consumers underestimate the quality of the product, firms behave as if they discount introductory contracts in order to build trust, and later on markup upgraded contract. In contrast, firms that offer a quality level that is lower than consumers’ expectations markup initial contracts while discounting upgraded ones.     

Pricing strategies in markets with dynamic elasticities

This paper approaches strategic pricing over the product life cycle while considering the impact of dynamic price elasticities. Extending the work of Simon (1979), a general optimal control formulation is proposed which relies on functional forms which have empirical foundations and can be calibrated in a managerial context. In addition to typical skimming and penetration strategies, dynamic elasticities can lead to saw tooth strategies; optimal prices may, for example, decrease, then increase, then decrease over the life cycle. Several normative results, based on numerical simulations, are presented and compared to those found in the literature.Thanks are owed to Jehoshua Eliashberg, Lydia Price, Wilfried Vanhonacker, the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this research and to Katrina Maxwell for her excellent research support.     

基于空间和时间维度的航空公司价格博弈

我国民航业经过多年来的运价改革和不断放松管制,已经逐步形成了比较典型的寡头垄断市场,航空公司间的竞争态势也日趋激烈。但由于缺乏其他有效的手段,航空公司间的竞争主要表现为价格战。本文运用伯川德、豪泰林等模型方法,从空间和时间两个维度,对航空公司间的价格博弈行为进行了系统分析,证明了实行多种差异化服务和提高网络干线市场集中度是航空公司确立竞争优势的基本途径。     

Mixed Strategy Pricing Behaviour in the UK Package Tour Industry

In a market, such as that for package tours, in which products are weakly differentiated and information is fuzzy, consumers may adopt search behaviour such that effectively, they play mixed strategies in the selection of the product that they choose to purchase. Tour operators' best response to this behaviour is mixed strategy pricing. Mixed strategy pricing is likely to mean that the variances of prices will be different at different points during the season for each operator. A simple model is formulated to illustrate the sequence of moves and the behaviour of variances. Brochure data for the summer seasons of 1982 and 1995 is analysed to investigate whether variances differ at different times during the season and thus differ systematically with the level of demand. The weight of evidence generally supports the view that operators adopt mixed strategies when setting brochure prices, even if achieved unconsciously through the application of rules of thumb. Strong evidence is found of the form that one operator, at least, produced a pattern of variances that is statistically significant and that could not result from the method of analysis adopted in the paper or from an ad hoc allocation of its fixed costs.     

中国股市定价权不容外移

中国股市的定价权是中国经济主权的构成部分，它不允许也不可能外移给国际机构。中国股市的国际化绝对不意味着中国股市非中国化，也绝对不意味着需要将股市定价权外移海外。资产定价中的“一价定理”在实践中是不成立。从“一价定理”中试图得出全球股市“一价”的结论，非旦是谋求一件不可能之事，而且可能极容易将研究引入误区。如果说对“一价定理”的实践效能缺乏认识还是属于研究不够深入严谨的话，那么，在明知这一定理存在实践缺陷的条件下，还在继续坚持并误导，就是别有他图了。市盈率存在着诸多缺陷，它只能是一个参考指标，不能是一个判别股价高低的基本指标，它并无一个国际通行的倍数标准。在建立多层次股票市场体系中，需要注意解决股市规则、构建机制、股市品种、机构投资者和制度建设等问题。建立多层次股票市场体系的过程，就是为中国股市国际化作准备的过程，也是中国股市国际化的构成部分。     

Agency Model and Wholesale Pricing: Apple versus Amazon in the E-Book Market

Apple’s choice of the agency model (i.e., Apple demands a share from the retail price set by the publishers) when entering the e-book market was surprising because: (i) the upstream firms can accrue all rents in a simultaneous move game if it determines the retail price; and (ii) the incumbent, Amazon, used wholesale pricing arrangements. This paper compares the two different contract types, pure and mixed: one retailer opts for wholesale, the other for the agency model. Departing from a standard and symmetric oligopolistic setup of Bertrand competing retailers and producers, the model accounts for retailers having (a) a significant contribution to the final value and (b) a strategic first-mover advantage. Both conditions combined are necessary (but not sufficient) in order to explain Apple’s choice and the possibility of an asymmetric equilibrium.     

中国稀土的国际定价地位研究

我国是世界上最大的稀土生产和储备国,占全球稀土出口50%以上的市场份额。但由于定价权的缺失,我国稀土出口对国际价格影响微弱,总量上的大国优势并未转化为现实的贸易利得,呈现出福利恶化型增长。总量看,稀土国际进出口市场均存在明显的寡头垄断性,但进口方微观市场影响力的强大使国际稀土处于买方市场状态。因此,我国应注重稀土的长远发展和行业集中度,增强企业实力,从微观层面上掌控稀土国际定价的主导权。     

Creating and consuming experiences in retail store environments: Comparing retailer and consumer perspectives

This article investigates the substance of arguments about an experience-oriented economy and experience-seeking consumption in retailing. Employing a case study research approach (n=7) and the Critical Incident Technique (n=252), we show how retailers as well as consumers relate to in-store experiences. The results point out that retailers’ use ever more advanced techniques in order to create compelling in-store experiences to their consumers. In contrast, the depiction given by consumers reveals that their in-store experiences to a large extent are constituted by traditional values such as the behavior of the personnel, a satisfactory selection of products and a layout that facilitates the store visit.