In this paper we estimate and empirically test different behavioral theories of consumer reference price formation. Two major theories are proposed to model the reference price reaction: assimilation contrast theory and prospect theory. We assume that different consumer segments will use...

In times of increasing oil prices and a weak dollar, European companies that focus their business on the US market may find themselves in a weak position. While many businesses can hedge this kind of risk by relocating production to the US, or employing financial remedies, these strategies may...

We analyze the strategic behavior of firms when demand is determined by a rule of thumb behavior of consumers. We assume consumer dynamics where individual consumers follow simple behavioral decision rules governed by imitation and habit as suggested in consumer research. On this basis, we...

Die Qualität einer Dienstleistung vor der Inanspruchnahme zu beurteilen, ist für Kunden nicht leicht. Dieser Beitrag untersucht mögliche Qualitätsindikatoren von Reitschulen in Deutschland und versucht, Qualitätsunterschiede zwischen Reitschulen herauszufinden. Die Daten für die...

Pay What You Want (PWYW) and Name Your Own Price (NYOP) are customerdriven pricing mechanisms that give customers (some) pricing power. Both have been used in service industries with high fixed capacity costs in order to appeal to additional customers by reducing prices without setting a...

The recent developments in information technology (IT) have enabled firms to employ personalized pricing. Should all firms employ personalized pricing even though the adaptation costs of such pricing strategies are not high? This paper theoretically demonstrates a situation in which all firms do...

Macroeconomists have traditionally ignored the behavior of temporary price markdowns ("sales") by retailers. Although sales are common in the micro price data, they are assumed to be unrelated to macroeconomic phenomena and generally filtered out. We challenge this view. First, using the 1996 -...

Cost cap tariffs are pay-per-use tariffs for which costs cannot exceed a predefined cost limit. They were recently introduced to telecommunications markets, but were previously also applied in the insurance industry as deductibles or in the rental industry as day rates. This paper develops and...

Uniform spatial pricing is a pricing policy by which a firm delivers its product to any customer at a fixed price, independent of the customer's location. For example, it is the method often, but not always used by mail-order and internet firms. Less well-recognized is that uniform pricing is...

The theoretical relationship between market structure (number of firms) and conduct (pricing behavior) of the generic drug industry was investigated. The effects of qualitative variables such as therapeutic category, duration of use, popularity, and market entry aggressiveness on the...