IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/75222.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Pay-What-You-Want Game and Laboratory Experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Greiff, Matthias
  • Egbert, Henrik

Abstract

This paper introduces the Pay-What-You-Want game which represents the interaction between a buyer and a seller in a Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) situation. The PWYW game embeds the dictator game and the trust game as subgames. This allows us to use previous experimental studies with the dictator and the trust game to identify three factors that can influence the success of PWYW pricing in business practice: (i) social context, (ii) social information, and (iii) deservingness. Only few cases of PWYW pricing for a longer period of time have been documented. By addressing repeated games, we isolate two additional factors which are likely to contribute to successful implementations of PWYW as a long term pricing strategy. These are (iv) communication and (v) the reduction of goal conflicts. The central implication of this study is that the results from experimental economics can provide guidance to developing long-term applications of PWYW pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Greiff, Matthias & Egbert, Henrik, 2016. "The Pay-What-You-Want Game and Laboratory Experiments," MPRA Paper 75222, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:75222
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/75222/1/MPRA_paper_75222.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Hoffman Elizabeth & McCabe Kevin & Shachat Keith & Smith Vernon, 1994. "Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 346-380, November.
    3. Ben-Ner, Avner & Putterman, Louis & Ren, Ting, 2011. "Lavish returns on cheap talk: Two-way communication in trust games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-13, February.
    4. Regner, Tobias & Riener, Gerhard, 2012. "Voluntary payments, privacy and social pressure on the internet: A natural field experiment," DICE Discussion Papers 82, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    5. Bouckaert, Jan & Dhaene, Geert, 2004. "Inter-ethnic trust and reciprocity: results of an experiment with small businessmen," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 869-886, November.
    6. Max Albert & Werner Güth & Erich Kirchler & Boris Maciejovsky, 2007. "Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people?—An experimental analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(1), pages 53-69, March.
    7. Edward P. Lazear & Ulrike Malmendier & Roberto A. Weber, 2012. "Sorting in Experiments with Application to Social Preferences," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 136-163, January.
    8. Juan Camilo Cardenas & Jeffrey Carpenter, 2008. "Behavioural Development Economics: Lessons from Field Labs in the Developing World," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 311-338.
    9. Ju-Young Kim & Katharina Kaufmann & Manuel Stegemann, 2014. "The impact of buyer–seller relationships and reference prices on the effectiveness of the pay what you want pricing mechanism," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 409-423, December.
    10. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard, 1986. "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 728-741, September.
    11. 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.
    12. Franzen, Axel & Pointner, Sonja, 2012. "Anonymity in the dictator game revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 74-81.
    13. James Andreoni & B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009. "Social Image and the 50-50 Norm: A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Audience Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1607-1636, September.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Chaim Fershtman & Uri Gneezy, 2001. "Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 351-377.
    17. Kim, Ju-Young & Natter, Martin & Spann, Martin, 2014. "Sampling, discounts or pay-what-you-want: Two field experiments," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 327-334.
    18. Michal Krawczyk & Anna Kukla-Gryz & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2015. "Pushed by the crowd or pulled by the leaders? Peer effects in Pay-What-You-Want," Working Papers 2015-25, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    19. Ruffle, Bradley J., 1998. "More Is Better, But Fair Is Fair: Tipping in Dictator and Ultimatum Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 247-265, May.
    20. Joel Huber & Kelly Goldsmith & Cassie Mogilner, 2008. "Reinforcement versus balance response in sequential choice," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 229-239, December.
    21. Friedel Bolle, 1998. "Rewarding Trust: An Experimental Study," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 83-98, August.
    22. Johnson, Jennifer Wiggins & Cui, Annie Peng, 2013. "To influence or not to influence: External reference price strategies in pay-what-you-want pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 275-281.
    23. Sucharita Chandran & Vicki G. Morwitz, 2005. "Effects of Participative Pricing on Consumers' Cognitions and Actions: A Goal Theoretic Perspective," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(2), pages 249-259, September.
    24. Jason Dana & Roberto Weber & Jason Kuang, 2007. "Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 67-80, October.
    25. 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.
    26. Kunter, Marcus, 2015. "Exploring the Pay-What-You-Want payment motivation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2347-2357.
    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. Egbert, Henrik, 2017. "The Gift and Pay-What-You-Want Pricing," MPRA Paper 82066, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Elisa Hofmann & Deliah Bolesta & Aya Adra, 2023. "Immorality Judgments and Framing Effects in Voluntary Payment Settings," Jena Economics Research Papers 2023-010, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.

    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. Greiff Matthias & Egbert Henrik, 2017. "The Pay-What-You-Want game: What can be learned from the experimental evidence on Dictator and Trust Games?," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 124-139, March.
    2. 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.
    3. Greiff, Matthias & Egbert, Henrik, 2016. "A Survey of the Empirical Evidence on PWYW Pricing," MPRA Paper 68693, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Gerpott, Torsten J. & Schneider, Christina, 2016. "Buying behaviors when similar products are available under pay-what-you-want and posted price conditions: Field-experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 135-145.
    5. Kukla-Gryz Anna & Zagórska Katarzyna, 2017. "The effects of individual internal versus external reference prices on consumer decisions for pay-what-you-want payments," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 4(51), pages 1-17, December.
    6. Rabbanee, Fazlul K. & Roy, Rajat & Sharma, Piyush, 2022. "Contextual differences in the moderating effects of price consciousness and social desirability in pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 13-25.
    7. Wang, Cindy Xin & Yuan, Hong & Beck, Joshua T., 2022. "Too tired for a good deal: How customer fatigue shapes the performance of Pay-What-You-Want pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 987-996.
    8. Hofmann, Elisa & Fiagbenu, Michael E. & Özgümüs, Asri & Tahamtan, Amir M. & Regner, Tobias, 2021. "Who is watching me? Disentangling audience and interpersonal closeness effects in a Pay-What-You-Want context," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Rafael Luis Wagner, 2019. "Lowering consumers’ price image without lowering their internal reference price: the role of pay-what-you-want pricing mechanism," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(4), pages 332-341, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Vahid Ashrafimoghari & Jordan W. Suchow, 2022. "A Game-theoretic Model of the Consumer Behavior Under Pay-What-You-Want Pricing Strategy," Papers 2207.08923, arXiv.org.
    14. 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.
    15. Saccardo, Silvia & Li, Charis X. & Samek, Anya & Gneezy, Ayelet, 2021. "Nudging generosity in consumer elective pricing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 91-104.
    16. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    17. 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.
    18. Sharma, Piyush & Roy, Rajat & Rabbanee, Fazlul K., 2020. "Interactive effects of situational and enduring involvement with perceived crowding and time pressure in pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 88-100.
    19. Jan Stoop, 2014. "From the lab to the field: envelopes, dictators and manners," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(2), pages 304-313, June.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pay-What-You-Want; PWYW Game; participative pricing; experiments; reciprocity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:75222. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.