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.     

Goodwill and dynamic advertising strategies

In this paper, we empirically analyze weekly advertising policies of manufacturing firms in consumer goods markets. We assume firms engage in persuasive advertising, thus policies of firms affect the goodwill of a brand. We introduce a demand and a goodwill production function. A simple transformation of the demand function allows us to identify not only the demand parameters but also the parameters of the goodwill production function. We reconstruct the unobserved goodwill levels using these parameters and past advertising levels. We restrict our attention to Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) strategies which are functions of payoff relevant state variables. Without imposing further restrictions on the dynamic competitive environment, we investigate the relationship between observed advertising strategies—which are assumed to be MPE—and payoff relevant state variables by means of several reduced form specifications. The most important determinant of advertising intensity turns out to be goodwill. We demonstrate that controlling for an advertising campaign significantly improves the explanatory power of the model. JEL Classification L13 . C73 . M30 . M37 I would like to thank Volkswagen Stiftung for the generous financial support which made this research possible.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

Informative Brand Advertising and Pricing Strategies in Internet Markets with Heterogeneous Consumer Search

The use of information intermediaries has been shown to undermine the effect of brand in online markets. In this paper, the effect of consumer search on the relationship between brand advertising and pricing strategies is analysed. Price data are taken from the leading UK motor insurance comparison website, with the advantage that prices can be related to the search characteristics of consumers and to the advertising expenditure of firms. The paper finds that more-advertised firms have lower price rankings at the comparison site, indicating that advertising is informative in this market. The main result is that consumer search weakens the relationship between advertising and pricing. An implication is that increased usage of price comparison sites will make informative brand advertising less important.     

Environmental coordination in dynamic oligopolistic markets

This article deals with the design of a coordination scheme which leads a set of firms competing on an oligopolistic market to achieve a global environmental constraint, for example, a global upper bound on some pollutant emissions. The concept of normalized equilibrium is used to design a noncooperative equilibrium under the global emission constraint. This equilibrium is based on the computation of a common multiplier for the global constraint, associated with a weighting vector, which indicates the relative importance given to each firm in the achievement of the constraint. This weighted multiplier is used to design an ad nominem tax scheme which induces the oligopolists to achieve the common global constraint. Finally it is shown that this equilibrium can be designed, for the long term, by restricting the analysis to an asymptotic equilibrium steady state, called turnpike equilibrium.Research supported by FNRS-Switzerland, FCAR-Quebec, and NSERC-Canada.     

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 of mall services in the presence of sales leakage

For a shopping mall, sales leakage occurs when consumer purchases facilitated by the mall are finalized outside it. These sales include, for example, catalog orders filled at the leased premises in a physical mall; For an Internet mall, they include the ones consumers make on an on-line store’s website after learning about the store from an Internet mall website. While these sales are difficult to track in the physical mall, Internet malls like Yahoo can track them by placing cookies on consumers when they visit the mall. The challenge for a mall owner then is to design an appropriate pricing model which takes sales leakage into account. In fact, Yahoo currently uses an All-Revenue-Share Fee with Yahoo collecting from on-line stores a share of all sales revenue, regardless of whether the purchase was made through the mall or directly from the store’s own URL. We explore this new All-Revenue-Share Fee model, compare it with the commonly used Fixed Fee model and the two-part tariff model, and identify the model with the highest profits for the mall under different conditions. We suggest that although an All-Revenue-Share Fee is appealing for Internet malls due to its ability to capture sales leakage directly, it may cause the stores to refrain from joining the mall in certain circumstances. Thus, in certain situations charging a fixed monthly fee can actually be more profitable for the mall versus the All-Revenue-Share Fee model. We also examine how mall and product category characteristics as well as market expansion affect the optimal pricing strategy. We show that a mall should price discriminate across product categories, not just by charging different amounts of fees, but by using different pricing models. Our research provides many managerial implications on how to price over time.     

预约定价制度适用于我国的成本悖论解析

实行预约定价制度可以较好地解决转让定价滥用和国际双重征税或不征税问题,提高税务部门工作效率。为了调查预约定价制度在我国的可行性,在对预约定价制度实行的基于信息、客体、国际税收合作、转让定价调整方法和事后监控的成本悖论进行具体分析的基础上,得出预约定价制度必须与传统的事后税收监管相结合,才能有效解决转让定价问题的结论。     

Drivers of dynamic learning and dynamic competitive capabilities in international strategic alliances

Research on dynamic competitive capabilities (DCCs) is critical for businesses to operate effectively in a rapidly changing environment. The driving forces of the dynamic learning mechanism (DLM) play a decisive role in the evolution of DCCs that the resource-based view (RBV) has failed to clearly identify. By engaging in an empirical study with a sample of 363 strategic alliances in Taiwanese companies, this paper shows that learning intent and embedded learning positively influence the drivers of DLM, such as manager integration power, external linkages, codification of experience, and ambiguity, to both strongly and positively affect DCC development in high-level management of international strategic alliances.     

The Effect of Pricing and Advertising on Customer Retention in a Liberalizing Market

This study investigates the drivers of customer retention in a liberalizing market. The authors address key retention issues that allow them to contribute to existing retention research in several critical ways. They (1) examine the effects of pricing and mass advertising, (2) account for (new entrants) competitors' actions, (3) investigate the dynamic impact of marketing tactics, and (4) study the proposed relationships in a market recently opened to competition. Using longitudinal data for a sample of 650 mobile phone consumers and a split-population hazard model that accounts for the notion that some customers are never at risk of defection, the authors show that both the focal firm's (incumbent) and the competitors' price and mass advertising exert a significant influence on the probability of terminating an existing incumbent relationship. They find that the relationships between marketing variables and retention are not static but vary over time. Price is generally less effective in the early stages of market liberalization, which suggests that customers become more price sensitive in later stages. Finally, the study findings can have important strategic implications on designing customer management and marketing resource allocation strategies, as well as on providing a competitive regulatory framework in liberalizing markets.     

Using diffusion models to forecast market size in emerging markets with applications to the Chinese car market

Marketing managers have to forecast the market size and this forecast guides strategic decisions whether to continue exporting, open new factories or expand existing production operations. Forecasting sales and the market size is a challenging task; even more so in emerging markets where data is limited and the market demand is changeable. This research proposes a novel approach that applies diffusion models using car ownership data to forecast car sales. Car ownership data may be easier to access than sales data in emerging markets but marketing managers are more interested in the sales forecast. Researchers propose using diffusion models to forecast the adoption of new products or products which are new to consumers in a market. This research demonstrates that marketing managers can use diffusion models to predict car sales in China where cars are new products to most consumers in this market. Since the majority of car buyers in China are first time buyers, car manufacturers and retailers must also forecast when the market composition will change. This effectively means predicting when first time car buying will start to slow down and repeat/replacement purchase or second hand car purchase will become more important. To forecast both sales and market composition change, marketing managers must choose a robust model. Managers want insights from models that have been tested robustly especially in less stable market conditions. In this context, this study illustrates the value of using a rolling forecast instead of a fixed horizon approach when comparing and choosing which model to use to forecast both sales and market composition change for the Chinese car market.     

Response strategies of local firms to import competition in emerging markets

Using a sample of 3808 firms from 1996 to 2007, the impact of three strategic options that can be implemented by local Asian (i.e., Indian) firms facing increased import competition in their domestic market is analyzed. On average, firms with greater investments in intangible resources and tighter product focus do better, while firms with greater international sales perform poorly compared to their peers. However, in industries characterized by high import competition, firms with international operations and product focus tend to have higher performance, while firms with intangible resources perform poorly.     

Managing Service Expectations in Online Markets: A Signaling Theory of E-tailer Pricing and Empirical Tests

Expectations play a significant role in determining customer perceptions and satisfaction. Accordingly, retailers seek to manage customers’ service expectations. However, the tangible signals of service quality that are available to brick-and-mortar retailers (such as location, store appearance, and salespersons’ behavior) may not be available in online markets. Using a signaling model, we obtain conditions when Internet retailers (e-tailers) use price to manage their customers’ service expectations. In contrast to extant theory, we find that it is possible for both low and high service e-tailers to use price in signaling their service levels. Further, we develop an appropriate deductive test of our theory based on price-ending patterns as an artifact of the signaling process. Based on this test, we find evidence that e-tailers indeed manage service expectations using price. Interestingly, we also find preliminary evidence that suggests customers implicitly associate price-ending patterns with a retailer's expected service level. We discuss several other implications of our findings for researchers and managers.     

Pricing practices and firms' market power in international cellular markets, an empirical study

Previous studies on international marketing have typically asked the question: “how is the demand characterized across countries?” Such analysis is then used to provide guidelines for firms to enter new markets and/or to allocate marketing resources across countries. To provide such normative guidelines, however, one also needs to analyze the supply-side of the problem, i.e., ask: “what is the likely market power that firms will be able to command in different countries?” Building on the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) framework, recent research in marketing provides marketers with a variety of models to explore competitive interactions among firms in the context of a single market. The goal of this paper is to extend this literature to a multimarket/multinational context to help international marketers assess the likely market power they face when entering new countries. We illustrate the proposed method on the mobile telecommunications industry, using price and quantity data from 10 countries around the world, estimating firms' market power as a function of a number of country characteristics.The results indicate that, while the simple presence of competition diminishes firms' market power, it does not lead to perfect competition. Interestingly, a higher number of competitors in a country does not seem to have significant incremental effect on market power. In contrast, the country's commitment to a severe antitrust policy has a significant negative effect, while the monopolist's lead-time before competition is allowed has a significant positive effect on market power. These findings, together with a change in price elasticities as a result of competition, suggest that market power in different countries may originate from two sources: (i) collusive pricing among cellular operators and (ii) consumers' switching costs across service providers. For international marketers, the findings imply that the attractiveness of wealthier countries (with usually faster diffusion rates and larger market potential) may be mitigated by higher levels of competition (as a result of developed antitrust regulation and more consumer exposure to competitive marketing practices). From a policy point of view, it suggests that (in contrast to the conventional wisdom) simple deregulation may not be enough to reduce prices to competitive levels. In addition, a severe antitrust policy is crucial to achieve this goal.     

我国缺失国际能源定价权的原因和对策分析

贸易摩擦和能源革命正驱动国际能源市场格局悄然发生变化,能源安全再一次成为各国关注的焦点.作为能源进口大国和隐含能源净出口大国,我国由于缺失国际能源定价权经常被动接受"中国溢价"而蒙受巨大损失.研究发现,我国缺失国际能源定价权的原因主要在于能源期货市场发展滞后,能源战略储备不足,人民币国际化程度较低,行业垄断度较高.面对...     

Differentiation strategies in emerging markets: The case of Latin American agribusinesses

This study furthers the research agenda on Porter's generic strategies by exploring their implementation by firms that suffer from under representation in the literature. It focuses on agribusinesses based in emerging markets that specialize in high value added products. Relying on information collected through interviews, and a survey with 66 agribusinesses based in eight countries of Latin America, it examines the factors that distinguish firms implementing a differentiation strategy (DS). The findings provide interesting insights for scholars and practitioners alike, illustrating the strategic initiatives that DS firms use to ensure they command higher than average prices.     

不同因素影响下我国出口企业依市定价行为的非对称性研究——基于总体层面和典型行业层面的比较

文章利用中美贸易数据,从出口企业总体层面以及行业(HS11、HS16)层面比较分析了三种不同的内、外部经济因素波动对我国出口企业依市定价(PTM)行为的非对称性影响。结果发现:(1)美国经济波动和汇率波动率对出口企业依市定价行为具有显著的非对称性影响,但汇率变化幅度则没有发现这种影响;(2)尽管具有某些共性,但不论从总体层面上还是典型行业层面,出口企业的PTM行为对于影响因素变化的敏感程度以及PTM程度在影响因素变化前后的非对称程度均存在着明显的差异;(3)无论影响因素如何波动,技术密集型产业(HS16)的PTM行为均低于劳动密集型产业(HS11)的PTM行为。文章对此进行了详细的分析并讨论了其政策涵义。