IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v141y2022icp13-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contextual differences in the moderating effects of price consciousness and social desirability in pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Rabbanee, Fazlul K.
  • Roy, Rajat
  • Sharma, Piyush

Abstract

This research explores the trade-offs that customers make between different economic, social, and psychological considerations to arrive at a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing decision. Specifically, it examines the differences in the moderating effects of price consciousness and social desirability on customers’ PWYW pricing decisions between private and public contexts. Three empirical studies are used to test the hypotheses. The findings reveal that the internal reference price and fairness perception positively affect the PWYW prices. These effects are moderated negatively (attenuated) by price consciousness and positively (enhanced) by social desirability. Moreover, the moderating effect of price consciousness is stronger in the private context, while the moderating effect of social desirability is stronger in the public context. These findings offer novel insights on the cognitive process underlying the trade-off between economic and socio-psychological boundary conditions (i.e., price consciousness and social desirability) that drive contrasting effects on customer decision-making in PWYW pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:141:y:2022:i:c:p:13-25
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.11.092
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321009073
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.11.092?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. Gilles Laurent & Pierre Chandon & Brian Wansink, 2000. "A Benefit Congruency Framework of Sales Promotion Effectiveness," Post-Print hal-00458440, HAL.
    2. Andreoni, James & Petrie, Ragan, 2004. "Public goods experiments without confidentiality: a glimpse into fund-raising," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1605-1623, July.
    3. Mak, Vincent & Zwick, Rami & Rao, Akshay R. & Pattaratanakun, Jake A., 2015. "“Pay what you want” as threshold public good provision," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 30-43.
    4. Richard H. Thaler, 2008. "Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 15-25, 01-02.
    5. 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.
    6. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    7. Lichtenstein, Donald R & Bloch, Peter H & Black, William C, 1988. "Correlates of Price Acceptability," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 15(2), pages 243-252, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Soetevent, Adriaan R., 2005. "Anonymity in giving in a natural context--a field experiment in 30 churches," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2301-2323, December.
    10. Bolton, Lisa E & Warlop, Luk & Alba, Joseph W, 2003. "Consumer Perceptions of Price (Un)Fairness," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(4), pages 474-491, March.
    11. Franzen, Axel & Pointner, Sonja, 2012. "Anonymity in the dictator game revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 74-81.
    12. 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.
    13. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram & Russell S. Winer, 1995. "Empirical Generalizations from Reference Price Research," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3_supplem), pages 161-169.
    14. 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.
    15. Adriaan Soetevent, 2005. "Anonymity in giving in a natural context-a field experiment in thirty churches," Framed Field Experiments 00198, The Field Experiments Website.
    16. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    17. Zaichkowsky, Judith Lynne, 1985. "Measuring the Involvement Construct," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 12(3), pages 341-352, December.
    18. David R. Bell & James M. Lattin, 2000. "Looking for Loss Aversion in Scanner Panel Data: The Confounding Effect of Price Response Heterogeneity," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 185-200, May.
    19. Honea, Heather & Dahl, Darren W., 2005. "The Promotion Affect Scale: Defining the Affective Dimensions of Promotion," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 543-551, April.
    20. 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.
    21. Kahsay, Goytom Abraha & Samahita, Margaret, 2015. "Pay-What-You-Want pricing schemes: A self-image perspective," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(C), pages 17-28.
    22. Axel Franzen & Sonja Pointner, 2013. "The external validity of giving in the dictator game," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 155-169, June.
    23. Kelly L. Haws & William O. Bearden, 2006. "Dynamic Pricing and Consumer Fairness Perceptions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(3), pages 304-311, October.
    24. 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.
    25. Das, Gopal & Roy, Rajat, 2019. "How self-construal guides preference for partitioned versus combined pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 152-160.
    26. Ofir, Chezy, 2004. "Reexamining Latitude of Price Acceptability and Price Thresholds: Predicting Basic Consumer Reaction to Price," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(4), pages 612-621, March.
    27. Viglia, Giampaolo & Abrate, Graziano, 2014. "How social comparison influences reference price formation in a service context," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 168-180.
    28. 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.
    29. Sirgy, M Joseph, 1982. "Self-Concept in Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(3), pages 287-300, December.
    30. Lynn, Michael & Flynn, Sean Masaki & Helion, Chelsea, 2013. "Do consumers prefer round prices? Evidence from pay-what-you-want decisions and self-pumped gasoline purchases," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 96-102.
    31. 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.
    32. Alford, Bruce L. & Biswas, Abhijit, 2002. "The effects of discount level, price consciousness and sale proneness on consumers' price perception and behavioral intention," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 775-783, September.
    33. LAURENT, Gilles & CHANDON, Pierre & WANSINK, Brian, 2000. "A benefit congruency framework of sales promotion effectiveness," HEC Research Papers Series 698, HEC Paris.
    34. Weisstein, Fei L. & Kukar-Kinney, Monika & Monroe, Kent B., 2016. "Determinants of consumers' response to pay-what-you-want pricing strategy on the Internet," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4313-4320.
    35. 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. 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.
    2. Ang, Dionysius & Diecidue, Enrico & Dewitte, Siegfried, 2022. "To deliberate or not? The effects of anticipated regret and deliberation on willingness-to-pay," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 563-578.

    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. 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.
    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. 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).
    4. Guang Yang & Mulin Liu & Mei Cai & Qihua Yin, 2024. "An analytical game perspective model for pay-what-you-want pricing schemes considering consumer fairness," Information Technology and Management, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 345-365, December.
    5. Greiff, Matthias & Egbert, Henrik, 2016. "The Pay-What-You-Want Game and Laboratory Experiments," MPRA Paper 75222, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Elisa Hofmann & Michael E. Fiagbenu & Asri Özgümüs & Amir M. Tahamtan & Tobias Regner, 2018. "My Peers are Watching me - Audience and Peer Effects in a Pay-What-You-Want Context," Jena Economics Research Papers 2018-019, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    11. Preeti Narwal & J. K. Nayak, 2020. "Investigating relative impact of reference prices on customers’ price evaluation in absence of posted prices: a case of Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 19(4), pages 234-247, August.
    12. Anya Samek & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2017. "Selective Recognition: How to Recognize Donors to Increase Charitable Giving," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1489-1496, July.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Anya Savikhin Samek & Roman Sheremeta, 2014. "Recognizing contributors: an experiment on public goods," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(4), pages 673-690, December.
    19. Richards, Timothy J. & Liaukonyte, Jura & Streletskaya, Nadia A., 2016. "Personalized pricing and price fairness," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 138-153.
    20. Nicole Koschate-Fischer & Katharina Wüllner, 2017. "New developments in behavioral pricing research," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 809-875, August.

    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:jbrese:v:141:y:2022:i:c:p:13-25. 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/jbusres .

    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.