IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v72y2017icp80-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Partitioned pricing, price fairness perceptions, and the moderating effects of brand relationships in SME business markets

Author

Listed:
  • Ferguson, Jodie L.
  • Brown, Brian P.
  • Johnston, Wesley J.

Abstract

Partitioned pricing effects on price perceptions have been studied in the consumer (B2C) market context, but not in the business (B2B) market, and particularly not in the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME), context. The current research investigates SME managers' affective and cognitive (e.g., price fairness perceptions) responses to partitioned pricing and extent of relationship with the selling brand. The first of three experimental studies finds that a partitioned price generates greater price fairness perceptions than an all-inclusive price. Study 2 finds that SME buyers elicit the greatest positive affect and the lowest negative affect when the buyer's firm has an established relationship with the brand and the seller partitions the price. The third study further examines the effects of relationship with the brand by separating brand mandate (i.e., when the buying firm requires employees to purchase from a specific brand) and relationship longevity.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferguson, Jodie L. & Brown, Brian P. & Johnston, Wesley J., 2017. "Partitioned pricing, price fairness perceptions, and the moderating effects of brand relationships in SME business markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 80-92.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:72:y:2017:i:c:p:80-92
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.11.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296316306142
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.11.001?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. Mehta, Rajiv & Polsa, Pia & Mazur, Jolanta & Xiucheng, Fan & Dubinsky, Alan J., 2006. "Strategic alliances in international distribution channels," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(10-11), pages 1094-1104, October.
    2. Raju, P.S. & Lonial, Subhash C. & Crum, Michael D., 2011. "Market orientation in the context of SMEs: A conceptual framework," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(12), pages 1320-1326.
    3. Alberto Sa Vinhas & Sharmila Chatterjee & Shantanu Dutta & Adam Fein & Joseph Lajos & Scott Neslin & Lisa Scheer & William Ross & Qiong Wang, 2010. "Channel design, coordination, and performance: Future research directions," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 223-237, September.
    4. Maxwell, Sarah, 2002. "Rule-based price fairness and its effect on willingness to purchase," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 191-212, April.
    5. Homburg, Christian & Klarmann, Martin & Schmitt, Jens, 2010. "Brand awareness in business markets: When is it related to firm performance?," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 201-212.
    6. 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.
    7. Machleit, Karen A. & Eroglu, Sevgin A., 2000. "Describing and Measuring Emotional Response to Shopping Experience," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 101-111, August.
    8. Marco Bertini & Luc Wathieu, 2008. "Research Note—Attention Arousal Through Price Partitioning," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(2), pages 236-246, 03-04.
    9. 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.
    10. Jodie Ferguson & Pam Ellen & William Bearden, 2014. "Procedural and Distributive Fairness: Determinants of Overall Price Fairness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 217-231, May.
    11. Shiv, Baba & Fedorikhin, Alexander, 1999. "Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(3), pages 278-292, December.
    12. Jodie Ferguson & Pam Ellen & Gabriela Piscopo, 2011. "Suspicion and Perceptions of Price Fairness in Times of Crisis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 98(2), pages 331-349, January.
    13. Wolfgang Ulaga & A. Eggert, 2010. "Managing customer share in key supplier relationships," Post-Print hal-00610118, HAL.
    14. Homburg, Christian & Allmann, Jan & Klarmann, Martin, 2014. "Internal and external price search in industrial buying: The moderating role of customer satisfaction," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(8), pages 1581-1588.
    15. Jonathan Z. Zhang & Oded Netzer & Asim Ansari, 2014. "Dynamic Targeted Pricing in B2B Relationships," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(3), pages 317-337, May.
    16. Carlson, Jay P. & Weathers, Danny, 2008. "Examining differences in consumer reactions to partitioned prices with a variable number of price components," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 724-731, July.
    17. Fournier, Susan, 1998. "Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(4), pages 343-373, March.
    18. Philip Kotler & Waldemar Pfoertsch, 2006. "B2B Brand Management," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-540-44729-0, December.
    19. Brown, Brian P. & Zablah, Alex R. & Bellenger, Danny N. & Johnston, Wesley J., 2011. "When do B2B brands influence the decision making of organizational buyers? An examination of the relationship between purchase risk and brand sensitivity," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 194-204.
    20. Mukherji, Ananda & Francis, John D., 2008. "Mutual adaptation in buyer-supplier relationships," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 154-161, February.
    21. Coviello, Nicole E. & Brodie, Roderick J. & Munro, Hugh J., 2000. "An investigation of marketing practice by firm size," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(5-6), pages 523-545.
    22. Xia, Lan & Kukar-Kinney, Monika & Monroe, Kent B., 2010. "Effects of Consumers’ Efforts on Price and Promotion Fairness Perceptions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 1-10.
    23. Emre S. Ozmen & M Atilla Oner & Farzad Khosrowshahi & Jason Underwood, 2013. "SME Buying Behaviour: Literature review and an application agenda," Post-Print halshs-01200695, HAL.
    24. Hakansson, Hakan & Ford, David, 2002. "How should companies interact in business networks?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 133-139, February.
    25. Franziska Völckner & Alexander Rühle & Martin Spann, 2012. "To divide or not to divide? The impact of partitioned pricing on the informational and sacrifice effects of price," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 719-730, September.
    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. Mohan, Mayoor & Ferguson, Jodie L. & Huhmann, Bruce A., 2022. "Endorser gender and age effects in B2B advertising," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 60-75.
    2. Pade, Robin & Feurer, Sven, 2022. "The mitigating role of nostalgia for consumer price unfairness perceptions in response to disadvantageous personalized pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 277-287.
    3. Kienzler, Mario & Kowalkowski, Christian & Kindström, Daniel, 2021. "Purchasing professionals and the flat-rate bias: Effects of price premiums, past usage, and relational ties on price plan choice," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 403-415.
    4. Das, Gopal & Roy, Rajat & Naidoo, Vik, 2020. "When do consumers prefer partitioned prices? The role of mood and pricing tactic persuasion knowledge," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 60-67.
    5. Zrelli, Imen & Demnati, Haykel & Ben Yedder, Moez, 2019. "The effect of the interaction between tariff modulation and transparency on the customer's dissatisfaction: The case of Tunisia," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-10.

    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. Pade, Robin & Feurer, Sven, 2022. "The mitigating role of nostalgia for consumer price unfairness perceptions in response to disadvantageous personalized pricing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 277-287.
    2. Kuo, Andrew & Rice, Dan Hamilton & Fennell, Patrick, 2016. "How fitting! The influence of fence-context fit on price discrimination fairness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2634-2640.
    3. Xia, Lan & Roggeveen, Anne L., 2022. "How collective stress affects price fairness perceptions: The role of nostalgia," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 361-371.
    4. Chu, Wujin & Lee, Jeongmin & Baumann, Chris & Kang, Christine, 2020. "Fairness perception of ancillary fees: Industry differences and communication strategies," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    5. Torsten Bornemann & Martin Klarmann & Martin Moosbrugger, 2020. "Verhaltenswissenschaftliche Forschung zum organisationalen Einkaufsverhalten: Überblick über die Marketingliteratur [Behavioral B2B Buying Research—An Overview of the Marketing Literature]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 72(4), pages 447-478, December.
    6. 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.
    7. Ferguson, Jodie L., 2014. "Implementing price increases in turbulent economies: Pricing approaches for reducing perceptions of price unfairness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 2732-2737.
    8. Huang, Wen-Hsien & Shen, George C. & Liang, Che-Ling, 2019. "The effect of threshold free shipping policies on online shoppers' willingness to pay for shipping," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 105-112.
    9. Fennell, Patrick B. & Coleman, Joshua T. & Kuo, Andrew, 2020. "The moderating role of donation quantifiers on price fairness judgments," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 464-473.
    10. Frank Huber & Frederik Meyer & Kai Vollhardt & Tobias Heußler, 2011. "Die Bedeutung von Emotionen für die wahrgenommene Fairness bei Preiserhöhungen," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 63(4), pages 404-426, June.
    11. Li, Shaobo (Kevin) & Kokkoris, Michail D. & Savani, Krishna, 2020. "Does everyone have the potential to achieve their ideal body weight? Lay theories about body weight and support for price discrimination policies," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 129-142.
    12. Ebbing, Tobias & Lüthje, Christian, 2021. "Pricing decisions of consumer innovators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(8).
    13. Nathan Chubaka Mushagalusa & Eddy Balemba Kanyurhi & Deogratias Bugandwa Mungu Akonkwa & Patrick Murhula Cubaka, 2022. "Measuring price fairness and its impact on consumers’ trust and switching intentions in microfinance institutions," Journal of Financial Services Marketing, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(2), pages 111-135, June.
    14. Johannes Voester & Bjoern Ivens & Alexander Leischnig, 2017. "Partitioned pricing: review of the literature and directions for further research," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 879-931, October.
    15. Jodie Ferguson & Pam Ellen & William Bearden, 2014. "Procedural and Distributive Fairness: Determinants of Overall Price Fairness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(2), pages 217-231, May.
    16. Nicole Koschate-Fischer & Katharina Wüllner, 2017. "New developments in behavioral pricing research," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(6), pages 809-875, August.
    17. Bechwati, Nada Nasr & Sisodia, Rajendra S. & Sheth, Jagdish N., 2009. "Developing a model of antecedents to consumers' perceptions and evaluations of price unfairness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(8), pages 761-767, August.
    18. Hufnagel, Gerrit & Schwaiger, Manfred & Weritz, Louisa, 2022. "Seeking the perfect price: Consumer responses to personalized price discrimination in e-commerce," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 346-365.
    19. Kanupriya Katyal & Vinay Kanetkar & Sanjay Patro, 2019. "What is a fair fare? Exploring the differences between perceived price fairness and perceived price unfairness," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(2), pages 133-146, April.
    20. Diana Maria VRÂNCEANU & Claudia Elena ?UCLEA, 2016. "Customers' Price Fairness Perceptions On Hotel Services: Insights Into Romanian Market," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 6(4), pages 70-79, September.

    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:72:y:2017:i:c:p:80-92. 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.