IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-01683838.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Convenience pricing in online retailing: Evidence from Amazon.com

Author

Listed:
  • Régis Chenavaz

    (KEDGE Business School [Marseille], GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Joeffrey Drouard

    (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Octavio R. Escobar

    (PSB - Paris School of Business - HESAM - HESAM Université - Communauté d'universités et d'établissements Hautes écoles Sorbonne Arts et métiers université)

  • Bruno Karoubi

    (UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12)

Abstract

To expedite payments, firms use convenience pricing strategies. A price is considered convenient if it can be paid with few coins. Convenient prices are well understood in offline retailing, but not online. This article fills the gap, examining an original panel dataset more than 2.5 million observations of book prices from Amazon.com. We provide empirical evidence supporting two claims. First in a static setup, more convenient prices are more likely to be set. Second in a dynamic setup, more convenient prices are more rigid. Emphasizing the role of convenience, this work sheds new light on price setting in online retailing.

Suggested Citation

  • Régis Chenavaz & Joeffrey Drouard & Octavio R. Escobar & Bruno Karoubi, 2018. "Convenience pricing in online retailing: Evidence from Amazon.com," Post-Print halshs-01683838, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01683838
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2017.10.016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levy, Daniel & Lee, Dongwon & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Kauffman, Robert J. & Bergen, Mark, 2011. "Price Points and Price Rigidity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 93(4), pages 1417-1431.
    2. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    3. Bambauer-Sachse, Silke & Grewal, Dhruv, 2011. "Temporal Reframing of Prices: When Is It Beneficial?," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 156-165.
    4. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D. & François, A., 2014. "Convenient prices, cash payments and price rigidity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 329-337.
    5. Bruno Karoubi & R駩s Chenavaz, 2015. "Prices for cash and cash for prices? Theory and evidence on convenient pricing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(38), pages 4102-4115, August.
    6. Franses, Philip Hans & Kippers, Jeanine, 2007. "An empirical analysis of euro cash payments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1985-1997, November.
    7. Edward S. Knotek, 2011. "Convenient Prices and Price Rigidity: Cross-Sectional Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 1076-1086, August.
    8. Anil K Kashyap, 1995. "Sticky Prices: New Evidence from Retail Catalogs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 245-274.
    9. Luc Aucremann & David Cornille, 2001. "Attractive prices and euro-rounding effects on inflation," Working Paper Document 17, National Bank of Belgium.
    10. Matthew S. Lewis, 2015. "Odd Prices at Retail Gasoline Stations: Focal Point Pricing and Tacit Collusion," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 664-685, September.
    11. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    12. Sims, Christopher A., 2010. "Rational Inattention and Monetary Economics," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 4, pages 155-181, Elsevier.
    13. Knotek II, Edward S., 2008. "Convenient prices, currency, and nominal rigidity: Theory with evidence from newspaper prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1303-1316, October.
    14. Cramer, J. S., 1983. "Currency by denomination," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 12(3-4), pages 299-303.
    15. Aucremanne, L. & Cornille, D., 2001. "Attractive Prices and Euro-Rounding Effects on Inflation," Papers 17, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
    16. Kleinsasser, Sabine & Wagner, Udo, 2011. "Price endings and tourism consumers’ price perceptions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 58-63.
    17. Kenneth C. Manning & David E. Sprott, 2009. "Price Endings, Left-Digit Effects, and Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 328-335.
    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. Snir, Avichai & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Levy, Daniel, 2022. "Zero-Ending Prices, Cognitive Convenience, and Price Rigidity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 203, pages 519-542.
    2. Régis Chenavaz & Corina Paraschiv & Gabriel Turinici, 2021. "Dynamic Pricing of New Products in Competitive Markets: A Mean-Field Game Approach," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 463-490, September.

    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. Bruno Karoubi & R駩s Chenavaz, 2015. "Prices for cash and cash for prices? Theory and evidence on convenient pricing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(38), pages 4102-4115, August.
    2. Snir, Avichai & (Allan) Chen, Haipeng & Levy, Daniel, 2022. "Zero-ending prices, cognitive convenience, and price rigidity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 519-542.
    3. Bouhdaoui, Y. & Bounie, D. & François, A., 2014. "Convenient prices, cash payments and price rigidity," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 329-337.
    4. Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel, 2021. "If You Think 9-Ending Prices Are Low, Think Again," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6(1 (Forthc).
    5. Bouhdaoui, Yassine & Van Hove, Leo, 2017. "On the socially optimal density of coin and banknote series: Do production costs really matter?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 252-267.
    6. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    7. Alex Nikolsko‐Rzhevskyy & Oleksandr Talavera & Nam Vu, 2023. "The flood that caused a drought," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 965-981, October.
    8. Snir, Avichai & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Levy, Daniel, 2021. "Stuck at Zero: Price Rigidity in a Runaway Inflation," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue forthcomi.
    9. Hahn, Volker & Marenčák, Michal, 2020. "Price points and price dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 127-144.
    10. Knotek, Edward S., 2024. "The roles of price points and menu costs in price rigidity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    11. Prescott, Brian C. & Shy, Oz, 2023. "Cash payments and the penny policy debate," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 80-94.
    12. Daniel Levy & Dongwon Lee & Haipeng (Allan) Chen & Robert J. Kauffman & Mark Bergen, 2011. "Price Points and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1417-1431, November.
    13. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo & Josephine Smith, 2014. "How Frequent Are Small Price Changes?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 137-155, April.
    14. Arango-Arango, Carlos A. & Bouhdaoui, Yassine & Bounie, David & Eschelbach, Martina & Hernandez, Lola, 2018. "Cash remains top-of-wallet! International evidence from payment diaries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 38-48.
    15. Shy, Oz, 2020. "How currency denomination and the ATM affect the way we pay," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    16. Ehrmann, Michael, 2006. "Rational inattention, inflation developments and perceptions after the euro cash changeover," Working Paper Series 588, European Central Bank.
    17. Diego Aparicio & Duncan Simester, 2022. "Price Frictions and the Success of New Products," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(6), pages 1057-1073, November.
    18. Aparicio, Diego & Rigobon, Roberto, 2023. "Quantum prices," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    19. Emmanuel Dhyne & Jerzy Konieczny & Fabio Rumler & Patrick Sevestre, 2009. "Price rigidity in the euro area - An assessment," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 380, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    20. Ater, Itai & Gerlitz, Omri, 2017. "Round prices and price rigidity: Evidence from outlawing odd prices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 188-203.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Convenient prices Price rigidity Rational inattention Amazon.com Online retailing;

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics

    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:hal:journl:halshs-01683838. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.