IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v137y2015icp41-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pay-what-you-want because I do not know how much to charge you

Author

Listed:
  • Tudón M., José F.

Abstract

With any positive fraction of altruistic consumers in the population who give away any positive fraction of their gains from trade, there exists a high enough level of uncertainty about demand such that the monopolist prefers pay-what-you-want over the traditional monopoly or any other pricing mechanism. Low marginal costs facilitate the adoption of pay-what-you-want. Consumer welfare always increases with pay-what-you-want.

Suggested Citation

  • Tudón M., José F., 2015. "Pay-what-you-want because I do not know how much to charge you," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 41-44.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:137:y:2015:i:c:p:41-44
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176515004231
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2015.10.021?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ilya Segal, 2003. "Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 509-529, June.
    2. Regner, Tobias & Barria, Javier A., 2009. "Do consumers pay voluntarily? The case of online music," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 395-406, August.
    3. Jun B. Kim & Paulo Albuquerque & Bart J. Bronnenberg, 2010. "Online Demand Under Limited Consumer Search," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1001-1023, 11-12.
    4. Chao, Yong & Fernandez, Jose & Nahata, Babu, 2015. "Pay-what-you-want pricing: Can it be profitable?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 176-185.
    5. Andreoni, James, 1989. "Giving with Impure Altruism: Applications to Charity and Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1447-1458, December.
    6. Regner, Tobias, 2014. "Social preferences? Google Answers!," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 188-209.
    7. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    8. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2006. "The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism - Experimental Evidence and New Theories," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 615-691, Elsevier.
    9. Klaus M. Schmidt & Martin Spann & Robert Zeithammer, 2015. "Pay What You Want as a Marketing Strategy in Monopolistic and Competitive Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1217-1236, June.
    10. Riener, Gerhard & Traxler, Christian, 2012. "Norms, moods, and free lunch: Longitudinal evidence on payments from a Pay-What-You-Want restaurant," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 476-483.
    11. Pieter A. Gautier & Bas van der Klaauw, 2012. "Selection in a field experiment with voluntary participation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 63-84, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emili Vizuete-Luciano & Oktay Güzel & José M. Merigó, 2023. "Bibliometric research of the Pay-What-You-Want Topic," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(5), pages 413-426, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gerpott Torsten J., 2016. "A review of the empirical literature on Pay-What-You-Want price setting," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 11(4), pages 566-596, December.
    2. Ma, Xuejing & Wang, Zetao & Liu, Hongju, 2022. "Do long-life customers pay more in pay-what-you-want pricing? Evidence from live streaming," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 998-1009.
    3. Samahita Margaret, 2020. "Pay-What-You-Want in Competition," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, January.
    4. Klaus M. Schmidt & Martin Spann & Robert Zeithammer, 2015. "Pay What You Want as a Marketing Strategy in Monopolistic and Competitive Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1217-1236, June.
    5. Armstrong Soule, Catherine A. & Madrigal, Robert, 2015. "Anchors and norms in anonymous pay-what-you-want pricing contexts," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 167-175.
    6. Gravert, Christina, 2017. "Pride and patronage - pay-what-you-want pricing at a charitable bookstore," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-7.
    7. Regner, Tobias, 2015. "Why consumers pay voluntarily: Evidence from online music," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 205-214.
    8. Ranjit M. Christopher & Fernando S. Machado, 2019. "Consumer response to design variations in pay-what-you-want pricing," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 879-898, September.
    9. Emili Vizuete-Luciano & Oktay Güzel & José M. Merigó, 2023. "Bibliometric research of the Pay-What-You-Want Topic," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(5), pages 413-426, October.
    10. Greiff, Matthias & Egbert, Henrik, 2016. "A Survey of the Empirical Evidence on PWYW Pricing," MPRA Paper 68693, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Stich, Lucas & Spann, Martin & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2022. "Paying for open access," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 273-286.
    12. Krämer, Florentin & Schmidt, Klaus M. & Spann, Martin & Stich, Lucas, 2017. "Delegating pricing power to customers: Pay What You Want or Name Your Own Price?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 125-140.
    13. Alessandra Casarico & Mirco Tonin, 2018. "Pay-What-You-Want to Support Independent Information - A Field Experiment on Motivation," CESifo Working Paper Series 6939, CESifo.
    14. Jin Young Chung, 2017. "Price fairness and PWYW (pay what you want): a behavioral economics perspective," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 16(1), pages 40-55, February.
    15. Tobias Regner & Gerhard Riener, 2017. "Privacy Is Precious: On the Attempt to Lift Anonymity on the Internet to Increase Revenue," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 318-336, June.
    16. Byung Cho Kim & So Eun Park & Detmar W. Straub, 2022. "Pay-What-You-Want Pricing in the Digital Product Marketplace: A Feasible Alternative to Piracy Prevention?," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(3), pages 784-793, September.
    17. Natter, Martin & Kaufmann, Katharina, 2015. "Voluntary market payments: Underlying motives, success drivers and success potentials," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 149-157.
    18. Reisman, Richard & Payne, Adrian & Frow, Pennie, 2019. "Pricing in consumer digital markets: A dynamic framework," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 139-148.
    19. Christoph Feldhaus & Tassilo Sobotta & Peter Werner, 2019. "Norm Uncertainty and Voluntary Payments in the Field," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 1855-1866, April.
    20. Roggentin, Agnes Sophie, 2019. "Applicability of Pay-What-You-Want to High-Value Goods – A Case Study," Marketing Review St.Gallen, Universität St.Gallen, Institut für Marketing und Customer Insight, vol. 36(5), pages 56-63.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pay-what-you-want; Uncertainty; Behavioral pricing; Participative pricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:137:y:2015:i:c:p:41-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.