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The purpose of this paper is to estimate whether health maintenance organizations (HMO) physicians are more price sensitive than non‐HMO physicians in their prescribing behavior of brand‐name substitutes.

The study uses physician level data and a set of 13 drugs for the years 1997‐2000 to estimate the price sensitivity of HMO and non‐HMO physicians. A two‐part model is used to measure the price elasticity of brand‐name prescribing for HMO physicians. The first part uses a logit model to examine the physician's choice to prescribe the same drug to all patients with the same medical condition, or whether physicians alternate prescriptions among brand‐name substitutes. The second part employs OLS to estimate the influence of managed care, i.e. HMOs, on physician price sensitivity.

The results suggest that HMO physicians are less likely than non‐HMO physicians to prescribe a common drug to all patients with a specific medical condition, but rather HMO physicians exhibit more diversified prescribing behavior. Correspondingly, HMO physicians are more price sensitive in prescribing brand‐name substitutes, than non‐HMO physicians, exhibiting price elasticities of prescribing ranging from −1.707 to −1.823. The analysis suggests that HMOs have a modest influence on encouraging physicians to be more price sensitive in their prescribing of brand‐name substitutes. HMO physicians are more price sensitive in their prescribing behavior than non‐HMO physicians.

This paper provides insight into the effectiveness of HMOs in altering physician prescribing behavior and price sensitivity of pharmaceutical prices. The results provide suggestions on how HMOs can improve the cost‐effectiveness of physician prescribing behavior.

This study aims to verify the antecedents influencing mobile gamers’ intentions to purchase mobile phones. To this end, the constructs price–quality relationship, price sensitivity, perceived quality, identification with the group of gamers and referrals from other gamers were identified in the literature.

Data were collected through an online questionnaire with 335 consumers. The model was tested using partial least squares.

It was verified that the price–quality relationship directly influences mobile gamers' intentions to purchase mobile phones. Also, it was observed that price sensitivity of mobile gamers directly influences the price–quality relationship and indirectly influences the intention to purchase mobile phones to play games. It was further verified that this price sensitivity is directly influenced by the perceived quality of mobile gaming devices. Finally, it was observed that referrals from other gamers directly influences the perceived quality and onès identification with the group of gamers.

This study concluded that developing strategies focused on prices of mobile phones gamers use to play games tends to influence mobile gamers' purchase intentions. This paper extends the study of mobile device purchase behavior, uniting constructs studied separately and proposing connections not yet tested, assisting in the theoretical understanding of the factors that contribute to the intention to purchase mobile devices.

This study is theoretically justified for four reasons: it focused on a specific group of consumers, mobile gamers, which is a constantly growing audience; it brought an innovative model, testing the influence of the perceived quality of mobile gaming devices on the price sensitivity of mobile gamers; there are spaces for new research on mobile device purchase intention; and it may assist in the theoretical understanding of the factors contributing to mobile device purchase intention.

As an important form of the e-commerce industry, online group buying is under the spotlight from with two sides: cheaper price but longer waiting time. The purpose of this paper is to adequately investigate the interaction between saving and waiting time of group buying comprehensively.

To fill the research gap, the authors elaborate a dual-channel supply chain (SC) with regular retail (individual buying) and group-buying channel, and formulate the demand based on the consumer utility with the positive effect of saving money and the negative effect of wasting time.

The authors find that power structure only changes the optimal prices, instead of the waiting time. The selling price mainly influences consumer demands, instead of the price discount of group buying. The SC profits are only positive to the channel preference, and it is the decisive parameter of consumers' choice. The price sensitivity lays a more remarkable impact on the SC compared to the time sensitivity. Above all, the price is the main factor of group buying, instead of time.

These results underscore the improvement for the dual-channel SC of group buying, providing managerial insights for the group-buying industry.

This paper analytically models and numerically investigates two operating levers, namely optimization of product price and optimization of product quality in the context of a manufacturer that sells the products directly in the marketplace. The study attempts to identify how optimizing product quality and product price can fulfill a manufacturer's economic aims such as maximization of the manufacturer's profit and market demand. Anchored to the extant literature, the demand is modeled as a parametric joint multiplicative function of price and quality. Further, price is modeled as a function of product quality.

First, the authors evolve the analytical expression for the manufacturer's profit. Thereafter, following the mathematical principles of unconstrained optimization, the authors arrive at the conditions for optimal product quality and product price. The authors further perform numerical experiments to understand the behavior of economic dimensions such as profit and demand with respect to sensitivities associated with cost, quality and price.

The authors find that under product quality optimization, the optimal product quality is a unique solution in that a highest possible theoretical manufacturer's profit is obtained. However, in the case of product price optimization, the optimal product price is non-unique and is a function of product quality. The authors further find that in the context of functional quality-level expectations, product quality optimization as an operating lever gives a better dividend. However, in the case of higher product quality expectations, product price optimization performs better than product quality optimization. Further, several novel findings are also obtained from numerical experimentations.

The findings of the authors' study have implications for types of industries characterized by relatively low as well as relatively high competitive intensity. Further, as opposed to several extant studies that have often carried out joint optimization of quality and price, the authors' study is one of the first to study the impact of product price and product quality on the manufacturer's economic objective in a disparate and focused manner, thus capturing individual effects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the real effects of primary and secondary equity markets on the post-issue operating performance of initial public offering (IPO) firms.

The author utilizes the intended use of proceeds as a proxy variable for the primary market and the investment-to-price sensitivity and the informativeness of stock prices as alternative proxy variables for the secondary market. The compositional data, and non-parametric quantile regressions which are more robust to outliers than standard least square regressions, are employed for Indonesian equity market over the period of 1999-2013.

While confirming that firm operating performance can be explained by the firm’s motivation to go public, the author also shows that the operating performance is positively affected by investment-to-price sensitivity and negatively affected by stock price informativeness. The stock prices affect investment decisions by the way that the more liquid a stock is, the more informative its price is, and the more relevant stock prices are in investment decisions. These findings still hold after controlling for ownership structure.

Departing from the existing literature, the author investigates the role of primary and secondary equity markets for firm performance in an integrated framework because both markets interact closely in reality. The author shows that public listed firms can benefit both from the capital-raising function of the primary market and from the informational role of the stock prices of the secondary market. A measure of stock price informativeness, 1−R², however, must be understood in the context of thin trading in the sense that the level of liquidity affects the level of stock price informativeness.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of product price image (PPI) on perceived value (PV) and repurchase intention (RI) of Brazilian customers' craft beer. Moreover, this research also verifies the moderating effect of customer experience (CE) and price sensitivity.

The survey data analysis was performed using Smart-PLS 3.3.9 and Process 4.1 software with 329 customers.

The results show that PV is a full mediation variable in the relationship between PPI and RI. As a mediated moderation, lower CE and price sensitivity better explain the indirect effect of PPI on RI via PV.

Thus, managers may reinforce the PV of low price sensitivity and low CE. These customers learn about companies' prices compared with higher price-sensitive customers and higher CE that already PV.

The article discusses the implications of PV as a mediator, low price sensitivity and low CE as moderators for craft beer.

1. The world's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage, following water and tea, the third-most-popular drink on earth is beer;

2. Managers should create strategies to reinforce the PV and consequently the RI by offering PPI and benefits (PV) for customers with low experience and low-price sensitivity about craft beer;

3. Low customer experience and low-price sensitive's customers are learning about companies' prices compared to higher price sensitive, and higher customer experience that already PV, PL, PF, and PEs and NEs;

4. Small producers craft beer that connotated the product's high quality and benefits; the higher may be the level of RI and consumption from customers.

The world's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage, following water and tea, the third-most-popular drink on earth is beer;

Managers should create strategies to reinforce the PV and consequently the RI by offering PPI and benefits (PV) for customers with low experience and low-price sensitivity about craft beer;

Low customer experience and low-price sensitive's customers are learning about companies' prices compared to higher price sensitive, and higher customer experience that already PV, PL, PF, and PEs and NEs;

Small producers craft beer that connotated the product's high quality and benefits; the higher may be the level of RI and consumption from customers.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the extent of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity prevalent among Indian youth, to test if there is a relationship between these two constructs and identify the reason for the same.

In order to empirically test the given objectives, instruments to measure susceptibility to interpersonal influence as well as price sensitivity were developed by using inputs from the literature. Responses were elicited from a sample of Indian youth (between 16 to 25 years) residing in various Indian cities. Relevant statistical tools were used to analyze the data.

Indian youth showed high scores on their traditional consumer behavioral traits of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity. It was shown that susceptibility to interpersonal influence had a significant impact on the level of price sensitivity among Indian youth. Gender played a significant role in this relationship.

The results provide many interesting insights with respect to the consumer behavioral traits of Indian youth. These insights will enable managers to develop effective marketing‐mix strategies, which would cater to the requirements of the Indian youth population.

This is the only contemporary paper in the extant literature which measures the level of susceptibility to interpersonal influence and price sensitivity prevalent among Indian youth and which attempts to identify an empirical relationship among these important constructs.

The purpose of this article is to examine whether the design of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation generates incentives to engage in managerial behavior that enhances customer satisfaction and whether these incentives, in turn, lead to higher firm value.

A unique dataset combining customer satisfaction and executive compensation data was used, and the relationship between option sensitivity, customer satisfaction and performance was modeled using simultaneous equations modeling with industry and year fixed effects.

Findings suggest that CEO compensation plays an important role in explaining the variation in customer satisfaction and firm value. Specifically, CEO short-term compensation (salary or bonus) has no affect on customer satisfaction or firm value; the sensitivity of CEO wealth from long-term incentive compensation to stock price changes is positively related and also exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with customer satisfaction; the sensitivity of CEO wealth from long-term incentive compensation to stock price changes interacts negatively with CEO longevity and industry concentration but positively with advertising expenses in affecting customer satisfaction; the sensitivity of CEO wealth from long-term incentive compensation to both stock price changes and customer satisfaction positively affect firm value; and the sensitivity of CEO wealth from long-term incentive compensation to stock price changes interacts positively with customer satisfaction to affect firm value.

This study suffers from several limitations. First, the sample is limited to firms with ACSI scores available. Second, this study is limited to only publicly traded firms, which limits our ability to generalize regarding customer satisfaction, option sensitivity and firm value.

This study has several important implications for researchers and managers. The first is that the corporate board appears to view investment in customer satisfaction as similar to an investment in other intangible assets or technology, in that they reward managers with a nonlinear payoff profile. To encourage managers to invest discretionary funds wisely, incentive compensation is important. Second, compensation committees of corporate boards should not allow the option sensitivity to reach extreme levels because, at some point, managers’ incentives appear to shift more toward short-term earnings objectives and away from investment in intangibles, which have a longer-term payoff. Third, if boards are concerned about customer satisfaction and market value, when designing compensation packages, they should shift their focus from the structure of pay to the sensitivity of pay to performance. The exception to this is that for CEOs with very long tenures (or for those close to retirement), high levels of option sensitivity may distort incentives away from a focus on customer satisfaction. Finally, our results indicate that strategies that enhance customer satisfaction provide an incremental benefit in terms of firm value, beyond incentive compensation strategies.

The results indicate that a “stakeholder focus” which includes customers is value adding for shareholders as well. The results also imply that perhaps using a “balanced scorecard” approach to assessing performance in terms of customer satisfaction outcomes, or at least acknowledging the drives of customer satisfaction explicitly, could be an alternative to using highly sensitive incentive-based compensation when such compensation schemes are less desirable.

Prior research has found that the structure of fixed versus incentive-based compensation impacts customer satisfaction. However, this is one of the first papers to investigate the relationship between the sensitivity of CEO compensation and customer satisfaction. Findings have important implications for boards who seek to structure CEO pay so that CEOs have incentives to enact policies that benefit customers and, in turn, firm performance.

The uncertainty of consumers' perceived value makes online education enterprises face great challenge in developing the pricing strategy. So the purpose of this paper is to research the pricing strategies of online education products by considering knowledge consumers' characteristics.

Considering consumer matching degree and price comparison, this study establishes the utility functions of consumers in normal sales period and discount selling period. On this basis, the research builds pricing models of the online education enterprise under the strategy of price undertaking and intertemporal pricing strategy. It further discusses the impact of consumer matching degree, consumer price sensitivity and different types of consumers on the product price and profit of online education enterprises, and reveals the optimal pricing strategy of the enterprise.

Consumer matching degree and price sensitivity coefficient have positive effects on product price and enterprise profit, but they have different effects on product demand; there are differences in the perceived value of the three types of consumers, and matching consumers are the optimal consumer group; the intertemporal pricing strategy is better than the strategy of price undertaking only when the price sensitivity coefficient is greater than a critical value.

This study enriches the literature on the pricing model of online education products and owns a practical significance to guide the online enterprise to make marketing strategies to increase profit.

The purpose of this paper is to make contributions toward new knowledge and understanding of how marketers can provide effective online customization experiences for customers. The practicality of online mass customization has received much attention as consumers perceive more value from customized products than from their standardized counterparts. Little research has been done to understand consumers’ behavioral intentions in response to these value additions. This study incorporates product information framing in developing and empirically testing a model of the relationship between online customization and price sensitivity, endowment addition and expected likelihood of product return.

The relationship among the constructs specified in the model was tested using multiple group structural equation modeling analysis.

The findings indicate that consumers perceived knowledge gain via customization process influences the utilitarian value, which directly impacts levels of likelihood of product return and price sensitivity. The process value, on the hedonic side, influences more on the endowment addition. Endowment addition is found to mediate the relationship between the hedonic benefits and the two utilitarian outcome variables: price sensitivity and likelihood of product return.

Understanding the consequences of customization is particularly crucial for marketers. This research is the first to expand and further our knowledge of customization, particularly in relation to its outcomes of customers’ behavioral intentions.