Pricing Strategies of Software Vendors

Due to the economic characteristics specific to the software industry, pricing concepts existing in other industries cannot be transferred without adaptation. Therefore, this article provides an overview of pricing models for software. In this context we discuss the six parameters formation of prices, structure of payment flow, assessment base, price discrimination, price bundling, and dynamic pricing strategies. Furthermore, we refer to recent software delivery models, such as Software as a service. The results are based on literature research and empirical studies.     

Cross-sector Alliances for Corporate Social Responsibility Partner Heterogeneity Moderates Environmental Strategy Outcomes

This article provides a new mechanism in understanding how partner heterogeneity moderates an alliance??s ability to advance corporate social responsibility goals. I identified the antecedents for firms to select a more diverse set of partners and explored whether more diverse alliances (especially cross-sector alliances) may facilitate partners to achieve more proactive environmental outcomes. I employ 146 environmental alliances formed in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009 to test the assertions. Results suggest that firms with innovative orientation and alliance experiences tend to choose a more diverse set of partners (especially cross-sector partners); and such partner heterogeneity in turn moderates an alliance??s environmental outcomes??compared to inter-firm alliances, cross-sector alliances are more likely to facilitate partners to pursue more proactive environmental strategies.     

Lock in and switch: Asymmetric information and new product diffusion

Many new web-based services are introduced as free services. Depending on the seller??s business model, some remain free in the long run, while others switch to pay mode at some point in time. I characterize the relation between buyers and a new service seller when the former are uncertain about the latter??s business model and need to incur a one-time sunk cost before enjoying the new service. I derive a natural signaling equilibrium where the seller plays a ??lock-in-and-switch?? strategy, while buyers play a ??wait-and-see?? strategy. Specifically, a high-cost seller starts by pricing at zero and waits for a sufficient number of consumers to adopt the new service, at which point the seller switches to pay mode. In this gradual separation equilibrium, the signal is given not by the price level (which always starts at zero) but rather by the duration of the introductory offer. Finally, I show the equilibrium entails diffusion even though consumers are identical and equally aware of the new service??s existence.     

Consumer perceptions to support IoT based smart parcel locker logistics in China

In recent years, the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) based smart parcel lockers has developed very rapidly in Asia due to the wider applications from retailers, e-commerce companies, logistics companies, and consumers. The revolution of smart technologies has transformed the traditional way of last-mile delivery from logistics outlets to IoT-based parcel lockers due to the flexibility, convenience, and 24/7 accessibility. However, there are still many obstacles affecting the transformation of last-mile delivery especially in consumers perceptions towards the smart technologies. Therefore, in this study, we performed research based on the theory of service quality and customer satisfaction in the adoption of relevant technologies. This article divides the smart parcel lockers' service quality into five dimensions: service price, service reliability, convenience, fault handling capability, and service diversity. In this study, 272 valid questionnaires were collected from China to investigate consumer satisfaction with the smart parcel locker services. Statistical analysis, including the reliability and validity, was performed, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The correlation between variables and the degree of influence on customer satisfaction and regression analysis was also undertaken in this study. The results revealed that the service price does not positively affect consumer satisfaction, and the other four underlying factors have a positive effect on consumer satisfaction. This research has significant impacts by determining the parcel lockers' core factors so as to foster the further development of last-mile services in the future.     

Price and Quality Strategies for Services:

Developing effective price and service quality strategies requires an understanding of the effect of price and service quality on buyers' attitudes, intentions and purchase decisions. Consumer Involvement is an important variable that may interact with price and service quality, and is the focus of this research. This paper examines the influence of involvement, price and service quality on attitudes and intention to purchase automobile insurance and long-distance telephone services.     

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。     

Service Firms Heterogeneity,International Collaborations and Export Participation

The paper investigates the relationship between service firms’ international collaboration strategies and export decision. It proposes an extension of the recent class of models of firm heterogeneity, intermediation and international trade according to which service firms can engage in a collaboration agreement with a foreign partner in order to favour their market access and distribution activities overseas. The paper analyses the empirical relevance of this model by means of a new survey dataset providing information on the internationalization activities of 814 Norwegian firms in the service sectors for the period 2004–2006. The econometric results point out that international collaboration, both on existing and on innovative services, is indeed an important factor to foster service firms’ decision to enter the export market.     

Explaining Market Heterogeneity in Terms of Value Perceptions

In the past decade, companies and academics have become aware of the great benefits of creating value for customers. However, little empirical research has yet been conducted in the area of services with respect to how customers may differ in their perceptions of value and what variables can explain such differences. This article provides an insight into how three relationship-based contingencies are likely to explain market heterogeneity in customers' perceptions of value. In particular, we explore how special treatment of the customer by the service provider, the level of customer involvement with the service, and the customer's accumulated experience with a particular company may act as predictors of market heterogeneity in the customer's perceptions of value within a service setting. Results offer evidence for the important role of relationships and experience in a service context mainly characterised by standard encounters, and provide interesting managerial insights to tailor strategies that effectively respond to market heterogeneity.     

Price versus service: Can retailers beat showrooming with competence?

Showrooming is a behavior of information gathering in offline stores before purchasing from an online retailer (usually at a lower price). As showrooming is a serious problem for offline retailers, this study investigates how they can compensate a price disadvantage against the online channel with service strategies. Two experiments examine the effects of (1) offline price disadvantage levels and service usage and (2) service quality and availability on showrooming. Results indicate that mere service usage can partly compensate price disadvantages. While service quality reduces showrooming, service availability only shows an impact when quality is high. Price fairness mediates these effects.     

Retailers’ Price Positioning and the Motivational Profiling of Store‐Brand Shoppers: The Case of Spain

In recent years, retailers have worked to advance store‐brand strategies, leading to greater success and higher congruence with the retailer's positioning. In this new competitive context, this research aims to characterize store‐brand shoppers in terms of motivation and benefits sought, as well as analyze, on the basis of congruence theory, the moderating role of a retailer's price positioning on store‐brand shopper characterizations. The empirical study combines survey and household panel information related to leading retailers in Spain; the findings reveal that store‐brand shoppers are motivated by their price sensitivity, whereas they are less sensitive to service quality and name brands. However, the retailer's price positioning exerts a moderating effect on shopper profiles: In less price‐oriented retail chains, store‐brand purchases seem motivated less by price and more by quality, brand awareness, and brand reputation.     

Joint pricing and design of urban highways with spatial and user group heterogeneity

This paper addresses the joint optimization of capacity investments and toll charges imposed on multi-group users in monopolistic private highways within general road networks. A game-theoretic formulation is provided that leads to a nonconvex bilevel program. The proposed modeling framework handles several complex issues raised in realistic applications, such as regulations on the levels of tolls and service, and the discrete nature of highway capacity, using a genetic optimization technique. Real-application results show the importance of considering the spatial heterogeneity of prices, and the tradeoff between investments and pricing strategies in regulated private highways.     

Responsible Leadership in Organizational Crises: An Analysis of the Effects of Public Perceptions of Selected SA Business Organizations’ Reputations

??The loss of a stable state?? (Schon 1973) in organizational transformation can both be regarded as lamentable and inevitable. Transformation causes disruption and invasions of comfort zones to those affected by it, but it is nevertheless inevitable. The article maintains that while the loss of a stable state is inevitable in the stream of change confronting organizations today, points of stability and methods of dealing with instability are attainable through responsible management. The article postulates that steps taken by responsible leadership in response to specific business crises will reduce the effects of instabilities brought about by such transformational situations and reassert a stable state more rapidly. Utilizing Weber??s ??ideal type?? model format (Morrison 2006) with a specific example of international best practice of remedial steps taken by management in reaction to a specific crisis experienced by an organization, the article uses a qualitative historical case study analysis and quantitative time series research design to investigate South African firms which had recently faced crises impinging on their current corporate reputations. Findings suggest that both the number of remedial steps taken by companies and the speed in which they are implemented in conformance with the model are negatively associated with the size of the share price falls immediately post crises. The findings also suggest that larger share price appreciations over 6-month post-crises are associated with greater perceived corporate reputations and brand strengths. Tentative conclusions and possibilities for further research are briefly discussed.     

Market Volatility and Feedback Effects from Dynamic Hedging

In this paper we analyze the manner in which the demand generated by dynamic hedging strategies affects the equilibrium price of the underlying asset. We derive an explicit expression for the transformation of market volatility under the impact of such strategies. It turns out that volatility increases and becomes time and price dependent. The strength of these effects however depends not only on the share of total demand that is due to hedging, but also significantly on the heterogeneity of the distribution of hedged payoffs. We finally discuss in what sense hedging strategies derived from the assumption of constant volatility may still be appropriate even though their implementation obviously violates this assumption.     

相关定价理论在物流服务定价中的应用

文章分析了服务价值定价论、边际成本定价论、价格歧视定价论、顾客让渡价值定价论等相关定价理论在物流服务定价中的应用,对物流服务供应商制定价格策略具借鉴意义。     

Investigating the impact of customer stochasticity on firm price discrimination strategies using a new Bayesian mixture scale heterogeneity model

In this paper, we study the impact of customer stochasticity on firm price discrimination strategies. We develop a new model termed the Bayesian Mixture Scale Heterogeneity (BMSH) model that incorporates both parameter heterogeneity and customer stochasticity using a mixture model approach, and demonstrate model identification using extensive simulations. We estimate the model on yogurt scanner data and find that compared to the benchmark mixed logit and multinomial probit models, our model shows that markets are less price elastic, and that a majority of customers exhibit stochasticity in purchases; our model also obtains better prediction and more profitable targeting strategies.     

Exploring the effect of retail sector and firm characteristics on retail price promotion strategy

This study examines why retail price promotion strategies vary across retail sectors and across firms within sectors. Using hierarchical linear modeling and a sample of 38 firms from 11 retail sectors, the authors investigate how two sector-level characteristics, related to product assortment perishability and heterogeneity, and three firm-level characteristics, related to retailer differentiation, number of stores, and average store size, influence price promotion decisions. The results indicate that assortment heterogeneity moderates the positive influence of perishability on price promotion activity; scale and scope also have significant effects. These results offer fresh insight into the ongoing debate surrounding stable versus promotional pricing, suggesting that the benefits of a particular strategy are driven largely by a complex interaction between sector-level characteristics as well as firm-level cost advantages.     

Consumers’ evaluation of allocation policies for scarce health care services: Vested interest activation trumps spatial and temporal distance

The allocation of scarce health care service resources often requires trade-offs between individual and collective outcomes (e.g., when some individuals benefit more strongly from a given policy than others). Based on construal level theory, one would expect that consumers cognitively represent the individual and collective outcomes of an allocation policy at different levels of abstraction and that they evaluate allocation policies more positively when there is congruency between the cognitive representation of the policy??s focal outcome and the spatial and temporal distance inherently present in the policy??s decision context (e.g., allocation decisions on a future policy). However, we hypothesize that this congruency effect can be overruled by a high vested interest mindset that is activated by an individual??s recent personal experience with a health care service provider. Since a high vested interest mindset increases the relevance of the allocation policy implementation for the individual because s/he perceives strong personal consequences, we propose that for consumers with recent experience the evaluation of an allocation policy that focuses on individual outcomes is higher than that of a policy that focuses on collective outcomes irrespective of the spatial and temporal distance in the decision context. Results of a hypothetical experiment among a representative sample of the general population confirm the congruency effects in the new domain of health care service allocation policies, and provide support for the proposed overruling effect of the activation of a high vested interest mindset by recent personal experience on spatial and temporal distance.     

Customer defection due to service elimination and post-elimination customer behavior: An empirical investigation in telecommunications

Service industries require rapid innovations in their service portfolios to gain and maintain competitive advantages. Service elimination is a potential tool for portfolio renewal, though it might threaten increased defection rates. To contribute to both service elimination and customer defection literature, this paper proposes a model of customer responses to service elimination, with practical implications for decision-makers in rapidly innovating telecommunication markets.In particular, the main study, conducted in the context of Hungary’s telecommunications sector, reveals that customers’ tenure, usage intensity, and age reduce the negative effects of a price increase on their defection; the price increase, degree to which customers interact with service providers, customer defection, and competitive effects in turn increase post–service elimination usage intensity.These findings suggest implementation strategies that can reduce customer defection following price increase due to service elimination, by focusing on new customers, light users, and the quality of customer interactions.     

Tradability, productivity, and international economic integration

This paper develops a model of endogenously tradable goods to study the implications of international integration for price dispersion and pricing to market. A distinctive feature of the model is heterogeneity in both trade costs and productivity. The model highlights the role of heterogeneity in shaping how new entrants at the extensive margin differ from incumbent traders, thereby giving extensive margin movements distinctive implications relative to the intensive margin. In particular, the model predicts that international integration mainly along the extensive margin should be associated with a more limited degree of price convergence. This prediction finds support in cross-sectional regressions on European data and offers insight into recent integration episodes.     

Trust and Fairness During Strategic Change Processes in Franchise Systems

A very important challenge for franchisors is adapting the strategies of their franchise systems to new threats and opportunities. During such strategic change processes (SCPs) franchisees are often required to make major financial investments and/or adjustments in their trade practices without any guarantee of positive benefits. It is, therefore, important that franchisees trust their franchisors during such change processes and that they perceive the change process as fair. This article aims to generate theory on franchisees?? perceptions of trust and fairness during SCPs. On the basis of case studies regarding eight change processes in four Dutch drugstore franchise systems, this article distinguishes different levels of franchisee trust and discusses five instruments that franchisors can ??institutionalize?? in their franchise systems to influence their franchisees?? trust and fairness perceptions.