The paper models export taxation of a primary commodity in a large country under two hypotheses about the structure of its export market. The first is perfect competition among exporters, where there is an indefinite number of buyers of the local product and at least a partial pass-through of...

An interesting phenomenon has been the emergence of “infomediaries” in the form of Internet referral services in many markets. These services offer consumers the opportunity to get price quotes from enrolled brick-and-mortar retailers and direct consumer traffic to particular retailers who...

Marketing managers frequently administer pricing policies involving substantial quantity discounts. However, our understanding of the precise role of these discounts, and their design, is quite limited. This paper reviews and integrates the economics and marketing literature and presents a...

The rapid advance in information technology now makes it feasible for sellers to condition their price offers on consumers’ prior purchase behavior. In this paper we examine when it is profitable to engage in this form of price discrimination when consumers can adopt strategies to protect...

In this paper, we analyze profitable pricing strategies when market segments overlap. Overlapping markets are segments that are not perfectly sealed, and leakage between them can occur. Different consumers are assumed to incur possibly different transaction costs if they choose to purchase in...

This paper defines a unique type of product or service offering, termed , and analyzes a novel selling strategy, termed (PS). A probabilistic good is not a concrete product or service but an offer involving a probability of getting any one of a set of multiple distinct items. Under the...

Prices for goods such as blades for razors, ink for printers, and concessions at movies are often set well above cost. Theory has shown that this could yield a profitable price discrimination strategy often termed “metering.” The idea is that a customer's intensity of demand for aftermarket...

We quantify the economic value of hardware base warranties in the U.S. server market to manufacturers, channel intermediaries, and customers. We further decompose the value of a warranty into its insurance value and its price discrimination value, which are the two main rationales for warranty...

The price for a product may be set too low, causing the seller to leave money on the table, or too high, driving away potential buyers. Contingent pricing can be useful in mitigating these problems. In contingent pricing arrangements, price is contingent on whether the seller succeeds in...

This paper examines a key difference between two promotional vehicles, coupons and rebates. Whereas coupons offer deals up front, with the purchase of the product, rebates can be redeemed only after purchase. When consumers experience uncertain redemption costs, this difference translates to a...