We study the link between price points and price rigidity using two data sets: weekly scanner data and Internet data. We find that “9” is the most frequent ending for the penny, dime, dollar, and ten-dollar digits; the most common price changes are those that keep the price endings at...

Despite its centrality to the topic, very little attention has been paid to the topic of price changes. Indeed, for the most part, organisations operate under the myth of costless price changes. This article broadens the definition of the costs of changing price and then presents strategic...

Item-pricing laws (IPLs) require a price tag on every item sold by a retailer. We study IPLs and assess their efficiency by quantifying their costs and comparing them to previously documented benefits. On the cost side, we posit that IPLs should lead to higher prices because they increase the...

In this paper we investigate the size of markups for nationally branded products sold in the U.S. retail grocery industry. Using scanner data from a large Midwestern supermarket chain, we compute several measures of upper and lower bounds on markup ratios for over 230 nationally branded products...

Analyses of a large retail scanner price data set reveal a new and surprising regularity - small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to 10¢. That is, we find asymmetric price adjustment "in the small." Furthermore, it turns out that...

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing...

There has been increasing interest in understanding how firms undertake non-price adjustment activities, especially in situations where prices may be rigid despite changes in market conditions. Using scanner price data for over 4500 different food products from a large US supermarket chain, we...

Asymmetric pricing or asymmetric price adjustment is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We offer and provide empirical support for a new theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. Wholesale prices may adjust asymmetrically in the small but symmetrically in the...