Delegating Pricing Power to Customers: Pay What You Want or Name Your Own Price?

Pay What You Want (PWYW) and Name Your Own Price (NYOP) are customer driven pricing mechanisms that give customers (some) pricing power. Both have been used in service industries with high fixed costs to price discriminate without setting a reference price. Their participatory and innovative nature gives rise to promotional benefits that do not accrue to posted-price sellers. We explore the nature and effects of these benefits and compare PWYW and NYOP using controlled lab experiments. We show that PWYW is a very aggressive strategy that achieves almost full market penetration. It can be profitable if there are promotional benefits and if marginal costs are low. In contrast, NYOP can be used profitably also if marginal costs are high and if there are no such benefits. It reduces price competition and segments the market. In a second experiment, we generate promotional benefits endogenously. We show that PWYW monopolizes the follow-up market but fails to be profitable. NYOP is less successful in penetrating the market but yields much higher profits

Delegating Pricing Power to Customers: Pay What You Want or Name Your Own Price?

Pay What You Want (PWYW) and Name Your Own Price (NYOP) are customer-driven pricing mechanisms that give customers (some) pricing power. Both have been used in service industries with high fixed capacity costs in order to appeal to additional customers by reducing prices without setting a reference price. In this experimental study we compare the functioning and the performance of these two pricing mechanisms. We show that both mechanisms can be successfully used to endogenously price discriminate. PWYW can be very successful if there is an additional promotional benefit to using PWYW and if marginal costs are not too high. PWYW is a very aggressive competitive strategy that achieves almost full market penetration. NYOP is a less aggressive strategy that can also be used if marginal costs are high. It reduces price competition and segments the market. Low valuation customers are more likely to use NYOP while high valuation customers prefer a posted price seller

Childhood Determinants of Risk Aversion: The Long Shadow of Compulsory Education

We study the determinants of individual attitudes towards risk and,in particular,why some individuals exhibit extremely high risk aversion. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we find that policy induced increases in high school graduation rates lead to significantly fewer individuals being highly risk averse in the next generation. Other significant determinants of risk aversion are age, sex, and parents' risk aversion. We verify that risk aversion matters for economic behavior in that it predicts individuals' volatility of income.schooling reforms; risk attitudes; intergenerational persistence

Joint Opaque booking systems for online travel agencies

This paper analyzes the properties of the advanced Opaque booking systems used by the online travel agencies in conjunction with their traditional transparent booking system. In section 2 we present an updated literature review. This review underlines the interest and the specicities of Opaque goods in the Tourism Industry. It also characterizes properties of the Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) channel introduced by Priceline and oering probabilistic goods to potential travelers. In the section 3 of the paper we present a theoretical model, in which we wonder what kind of Opaque system can be implemented by a given online monopoly. We compare the "Opaque \Hotwire system", a NYOP system without any possibility of rebidding and the joint implementation of these two systems. We nd that the NYOP system and the joint implementation can have challenging properties if consumer's information is complete. Then, in section 4, we analyze the case of incomplete information. We develop an appropriate setting to integrate the lack of complete information of potential passengers on their relative propensity to pay. We analyze three cases corresponding to dierent levels of uncertainty and number of tickets available. We nd that in some relevant cases (average number of tickets, moderate uncertainty), the joint implementation of 2 dierent Opaque booking systems is advantageous for the Online travel Agencies (OTAs) and airlines. This result casts doubt on the current OTAs' strategies.Opaque Selling, Name-Your-Own-Price, Economics of Tourism, Online Travel Agencies, Probabilistic Goods.

Cognitive abilities and portfolio choice

We study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities: mathematical, verbal fluency, and recall skills. We find that the propensity to invest in stocks is strongly associated with cognitive abilities, for both direct stock market participation and indirect participation through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Since the decision to invest in less information-intensive assets (such as bonds) is less strongly related to cognitive abilities, we conclude that the association between cognitive abilities and stockholding is driven by information constraints, rather than by features of preferences or psychological traits

Joint Opaque Selling Systems for Online Travel Agencies

Cet article analyse les ventes opaques qui constituent un canal de distribution alternatif aux canaux traditionnels. Deux variantes sont pratiquées. La première, développée par Hotwire.com repose sur des prix affichés et un service garanti par le vendeur dès le paiement. La seconde, proposée par Priceline.com, fonctionne sur la base d’une sorte de système d’enchères, les clients potentiels formulant un prix pour une offre qui leur sera d’autant plus accessible que le prix proposé est élevé. Nous proposons un modèle analytique permettant de comparer l’application individuelle et simultanée de ces deux variantes par une agence de voyages en ligne en situation de monopole et faisant face à une demande hétérogène. Deux situations sont explorées : une information complète mais imparfaite et une information incomplète et imparfaite. Les résultats obtenus montrent qu’en information complète et imparfaite l’adoption simultanée des deux systèmes n’améliore pas les profits du monopoleur. En revanche, dans le cas où l’information est incomplète, ce qui semble le plus pertinent, l’utilisation des deux canaux opaques accroît le profit joint de la compagnie et de l’intermédiaire, ce qui jette un doute sur le bien-fondé des stratégies retenues actuellement par les intermédiaires.This paper analyses the properties of sophisticated opaque booking systems, implemented by online travel agencies in conjunction, usually, with traditional transparent systems. We characterize the opaque products as opposed to traditional transparent products. We focus on the two particular distribution models: opaque posted price system developed by Hotwire.com, and the Name-Your-Own-Price system developed by Priceline.com. We propose an analytical model to compare the results of individual implementation and joint implementation of these two models by an online travel agency in a monopoly position. We consider the cases of complete and incomplete information by introducing consumer uncertainty about their relative propensity to pay and about prevailing states of the world. We find that under realistic assumptions, including moderate levels of uncertainty and average number of ticket sales, joint implementation of both systems provides the best results for the online travel agency, which casts doubt on current dominant strategies

Simulative and Game-Theoretical Approaches for Strategic Behavior in Name-Your-Own-Price Markets

Name-Your-Own-Price is a popular interactive pricing mechanism in Electronic Commerce that lets both, buyer and seller, influence the price of a product. At the outset, a seller defines a secret threshold price indicating the minimum price he is willing to sell the product for. Subsequently, a buyer is asked to place a bid indicating her willingness-to-pay for the product offered. If the bid value is equal or above the seller’s threshold price, the transaction is initiated for the price denoted by the buyer’s bid. In this paper we show how buyer and seller strategically behave in such markets and derive from the results what product classes seem suitable for sale in a Name-Your-Own-Price-channel. To address this question, we apply two different approaches - an agent-based simulation and a game theoretical approach - and illustrate thereby the advantages and disadvantages of both methods

Price differentiation strategies

Both practitioners and academics agree about the importance of price and its direct influenceon consumers’ purchase decision as well as the company profit. In the reality, we rarely see a single price for a given product. One visit in a store already shows that consumers face many various prices. This strategy of differential prices allows to increase profit but also improves consumers’ situation and increases welfare. A wide range of various price differentiation mechanisms exists on the market which makes price differentiation a very interesting phenomenon. Additionally, market developments constantly allow for new price differentiation applications. In this work, I research a fascinating topic of price differentiation, its various forms and new application possibilities in changing market areas