O Preço É Justo?: Um Estudo Sobre As Percepções De Consumidores E Turistas Sobre A Precificação Dinâmica De Um Aplicativo De Mobilidade Urbana

Several tourism services use the demand-supply relationship for the establishment of their prices, especially transportation and lodging services. One of the reasons why organizations should use dynamic pricing is because there is a variation between the days of the week and times of day, and there is a high degree of unpredictability that often leads to a high or a shortage of demand. Without dynamic prices, organizations would have to adjust prices above the normal price to prevent market consequences from leading to service problems in times of high demand. However, behavioral economists argue that such price variations may be considered unfair or unacceptable. The traditional economic arguments for prices in dynamic tariffs do not seem to convince people. The importance to the argumentation and the information that is directed to the consumer is fundamental for the fairness perception. Most fairness perceptions studies related to differential pricing are concentrated in the context of buying airline tickets. It is interesting, therefore, to extend the analysis of the perception of fairness in prices for other transactions in the tourism sector, and for fairness perceptions in different dynamic pricing contexts such as urban mobility applications. For this study the Uber application was chosen because it is among the most downloaded travel applications and considered useful by it users, dynamic pricing is characterized by a singular context: prices are dynamically defined in real time, so there are no tariffs as is normally observed in tourism. Thus, observing whether tourists accept and how they behave with this pricing method in Uber's context may have both management and theory implications. Moreover, if the suppression of the tariff multiplier for the user could change or not the perception of price justice. The method chosen to achieve the objectives of this study was the focus group. The focal groups were held with 20 users of the application they used at times of travel and then a content analysis of the transcribed material. The results indicate that there is division between those who believe the pricing method is fair and those who believe it is unfair. Some participants indicated that multiplier information can disrupt the tourist experience while others prefer to receive this information. It is concluded that the evaluations of the tourists are not static, and the context can influence the tourist to accept or not the dynamic pricing method.