The Three Capitals of Pricing – Human, Systems and Social Capital

In this paper we explore the possibility, heretofore unexplored in the marketing literature, that firms “invest funds” in their pricing processes. This builds on some of the recent economic work on the costs of price adjustment. To do this we undertook a two-year, cross- disciplinary, ethnographic study on the nature of investments made by senior managers to enhance the effectiveness of the pricing processes within their firms. We discovered at least three distinct types of investments that managers at these firms made to price more effectively, which we term as the three capitals of pricing - human capital, systems capital and social capital. Our evidence suggests that pricing is really about managing both prices and investments in the pricing capital used to set and adjust those prices. The existence of these three forms of pricing capital provides a new perspective on pricing strategy, suggesting that firms compete on prices simultaneously in three different ways within their organizations. First, they compete on whether to invest in pricing capital versus or other areas of capital investment, such as plant, equipment, etc. Second, they decide what form of pricing capital to invest in – human, systems or social. Third, they set and adjust prices constrained by the existing pricing capital they have in place at the time of their pricing actions. We discuss the implications of these three forms of pricing capital and these new perspectives on pricing for the marketing, economics and strategy literature.Cost of Price Adjustment, Menu Cost, Managerial and Customer Costs of Price Adjustment, Pricing Capital, Pricing Production Process (PPP), Price Rigidity, Sticky Prices, Rigid Prices, Microfoundations of the Costs of Price Adjustment, Allocative Efficiency, Price System, Endogenous Price Adjustment Cost, Pricing, Human Capital, Systems Capital, Social Capital, Resource Based View of the Firm, Ethnography

Shattering the Myth of Costless Price Changes: Emerging Perspectives on Dynamic Pricing

In this paper we argue that pricing is all about price changes, and that the costs of price changes are often simultaneously subtle and substantial. We discuss a framework to deal with the dynamics of changing prices. This framework incorporates customer interpretations of price changes, an awareness of the organizational costs of price changes, investments in future pricing processes, and an understanding of the role that supply chains play in price change strategy. The framework can be used at the tactical level to improve the specific price changes chosen and made, at the managerial level to decide whether or not to make a particular price change at all, and at the strategic level to determine what price adjustment processes should be invested in to improve pricing effectiveness in the future.Menu Cost, Myth, Costly Price Change, Cost of Price Adjustment, Dynamic Pricing, Customer Cost of Price Adjustment, Organizational Cost of Price Adjustment, Managerial Cost of Price Adjustment, Supply Chain, Investment in Pricing Processes, Price Change Tactic, Price Change Strategy, Pricing Tactics, Pricing Strategy, Pricing Effectiveness

Managerial and Customer Costs of Price Adjustment: Direct Evidence from Industrial Markets

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing industrial organization or the macroeconomics literature recognizes. In addition to physical costs ("menu costs"), we identify and measure three types of managerial costs—information gathering, decision-making and communication costs, and two types of customer costs—communication, and negotiation costs. We find that the managerial costs are more than six times, and customer costs are more than twenty times, the menu costs. In total, the price adjustment costs comprise 1.22 percent of the company’s revenue and 20.03 percent of the company’s net margin. We show that many components of the managerial and customer costs are convex, while the menu costs are not. We also document the link between price adjustment costs and price rigidity. Finally, we provide evidence of managers’ fear of "antagonizing" customers.Menu Cost, Cost of Price Adjustment, Managerial Cost, Customer Cost, Information Gathering Cost, Information Processing Cost, Decision Making Cost, Communication Cost, Thinking Cost, Negotiation Cost, Customer Antagonization Cost, Convex Cost of Price Adjustment, Sticky Prices, Price Rigidity

Beyond the Cost of Price Adjustment: Investments in Pricing Capital

The literature on costs of price adjustment has long argued that changing prices is a complex and costly process. In fact, some authors have suggested that we should think of firms’ price-setting activities as “producing” prices, similar to the way firms use production processes to produce goods and services. In this paper we explore one natural extension of this view, that besides observing costs of price adjustment, we should also expect to see firm-level investments in capital expenditures into these “pricing” production processes. We coin the term “pricing capital” for these investments, and suggest that they can improve the efficiency of the “pricing production” activities by both reducing the costs of adjusting prices, and improving the effectiveness of price adjustments in future periods. Using two types of data sources, we find compelling evidence of the existence as well as the importance of pricing capital in firms. The existence of firm-level “pricing capital” has the potential of fundamentally altering the way we think about pricing and price adjustment in many areas of economics. It suggests looking toward the “pricing capital” to decipher the likely degree and causes of price rigidity and its variation across price setters, markets, and industries. Moreover, “pricing capital” introduces a new, higher-level, pricing decision made by individual firms. Decisions to invest in pricing capital compete with traditional capital investment decisions that have long been studied in economics, such as capital investments in plant, equipment, and R&D. Furthermore, since pricing capital is a choice variable, it implies that costs of price adjustment often used in models of price rigidity are endogenous. As such, pricing capital offers new insights into the micro-foundations of the costs of price adjustment. The most provocative implication of the new theory of pricing, however, is that the allocative efficiency of the price system itself may be determined endogenously by individual price setters who choose whether and how much to invest in pricing capital.Cost of Price Adjustment, Menu Cost, Managerial and Customer Costs of Price Adjustment, Pricing Capital, Pricing Production Process (PPP), Price Rigidity, Sticky Prices, Rigid Prices, Microfoundations of the Costs of Price Adjustment, Allocative Efficiency, Price System, Endogenous Price Adjustment Cost

Beyond the Cost of Price Adjustment: Investments in Pricing Capital

Abstract The literature on costs of price adjustment has long argued that changing prices is a complex and costly process. In fact, some authors have suggested that we should think of firms' price-setting activities as "producing" prices, similar to the way firms use production processes to produce goods and services. In this paper we explore one natural extension of this view, that besides observing costs of price adjustment, we should also expect to see firm-level investments in capital expenditures into these "pricing" production processes. We coin the term "pricing capital" for these investments, and suggest that they can improve the efficiency of the "pricing production" activities by both reducing the costs of adjusting prices, and improving the effectiveness of price adjustments in future periods. Using two types of data sources, we find compelling evidence of the existence as well as the importance of pricing capital in firms. The existence of firm-level "pricing capital" has the potential of fundamentally altering the way we think about pricing and price adjustment in many areas of economics. It suggests looking toward the "pricing capital" to decipher the likely degree and causes of price rigidity and its variation across price setters, markets, and industries. Moreover, "pricing capital" introduces a new, higher-level, pricing decision made by individual firms. Decisions to invest in pricing capital compete with traditional capital investment decisions that have long been studied in economics, such as capital investments in plant, equipment, and R&D. Furthermore, since pricing capital is a choice variable, it implies that costs of price adjustment often used in models of price rigidity are endogenous. As such, pricing capital offers new insights into the micro-foundations of the costs of price adjustment. The most provocative implication of the new theory of pricing, however, is that the allocative efficiency of the price system itself may be determined endogenously by individual price setters who choose whether and how much to invest in pricing capital.

Costly Information, Planning Complementarities and the Phillips Curve

Standard sticky information pricing models successfully capture the sluggish movement of aggregate prices in response to monetary policy shocks but fail at matching the magnitude and frequency of price changes at the micro level. This paper shows that in a setting where firms choose when to acquire costly information about different types of shocks, strategic complementarities in pricing generate planning complementarities. This results in firms optimally updating their information about monetary policy shocks less frequently than about idiosyncratic shocks. When calibrated to match frequent and large price changes observed in micro pricing data, the model is still capable of producing substantial non-neutralities. In addition, I use the model consistent Phillips curve and data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to estimate the frequency at which firms update their information about monetary policy shocks. I find that the frequency of updating was higher in the 1970s compared to subsequent decades and hence conclude that monetary policy in the U.S. was relatively less effective prior to the 1980s

Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small

Analyzing a large weekly retail transaction price dataset, we uncover a surprising regularity—small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to about 10 cents, while there is no such asymmetry for larger price changes. The asymmetry holds for the entire sample and for individual categories. We find that while inflation can explain some of the asymmetry, inflation is not the whole story as the asymmetry holds even after excluding inflationary periods from the data, and even for products whose price had not increased over the eight-year period. The findings hold for different measures of inflation and also after allowing for lagged price adjustments. We offer a consumer-based explanation for these findings

A sociological view of costs of price adjustment: contributions from grounded theory methods

Economic theory and data sometimes pose problems that cannot be addressed with existing econometric methods. For example, theories of price adjustment costs rely on variables that cannot or have not been observed. In principle, such costs can be measured, but there is little reason to expect they can be measured with existing econometric methods. I argue that the grounded theory methods developed by sociologists can be used to demonstrate the validity of price adjustment costs and to address deeper questions about how firms adjust prices. Properly matched to economic problems, grounded theory may help economists to develop better theory and better test existing theory. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.