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As pricing has evolved as a specialty over the past 20 years, there has been increased focus on the concept of value – what it is, how to measure it, and why it is important. Value is important not only for setting prices but for establishing product and negotiating strategies and tactics. This chapter first discusses the importance of value in the price-setting process. Second, it frames how to define and measure value. Last, it explains how value tools can help salespeople in their negotiations process. It will review the application of these value measures in a business-to-business (B2B) environment and report on a technique of value measurement called Case ROI™. This measurement is particularly useful because it calculates the value of new products, technologies, and services at both the segment and the individual customer levels with a higher level of precision and relevance than other methods. It is based on a field-value-in-use technique that will be discussed in detail.

Advances in technology, operations research, and data driven pricing and marketing are leading pricing strategy into new and untested waters – toward dynamic pricing, and variable pricing strategies, which ultimately require changes in how we view pricing strategy. The dominant view of pricing strategy is that pricing goals, objectives, and strategies should be formulated a priori, and should be consistent with marketing and corporate strategies – deliberate pricing strategy. This chapter argues that firms need to develop new strategic pricing skills that lead to more improvisational, innovative, or adaptive pricing strategies. I call this type of price strategy-making emergent pricing strategy. Innovative pricing strategies that the organization judges, or senses to be effective, are repeated, shared, expanded, and refined into successful pricing patterns that, over time and across situations, become pricing strategy. Thus, rather than specifically designing pricing strategy to achieve a goal, here the organization acts upon a price innovation that seems to make sense for this customer, this market segment, this setting, and this situation, then interprets the outcomes, signals, and reactions that seem to flow from the pricing action, and shares and encourages adoption and adaption by others in the organization. Emergent pricing strategy is particularly useful in unstable, turbulent, and complex product and market environments in which price-sensitive buyers wield significant power and influence.

After pioneering, but insular, work on the conceptualization and measurement of customer value in business markets undertaken in the 80s and 90s, interest in this topic is substantial since the beginning of this decade. Despite this recent interest, marketing scholars concur that value in business markets is still an under-researched subject. This contribution to the debate is threefold. The paper first proposes an own model of customer value conceptualization in business markets; based on several rounds of testing this theoretically grounded model in managerial practice indications exist to conclude that this model may offer benefits over current models.

Secondly, the paper provides a comprehensive survey of pricing approaches in industrial markets. The paper integrates this literature overview with own empirical findings. Concurrently the paper summarizes extant research on the link between pricing approach and profitability in industrial markets. The paper thirdly proposes a framework for value delivery and value-based pricing strategies in industrial markets. Proposing such a framework is both useful as well as necessary. Useful, since this framework guides new product development and pricing decisions and assists in the implementation of price-repositioning strategies for existing products; necessary, since the theoretical and practical adoption of value-based delivery and pricing strategies may have suffered from the lack of a unifying conceptual framework. Two case studies, one involving the pricing decision for a major product launch at a global chemical company, the other involving value delivery at an industrial equipment manufacturer, illustrate the practical applicability of the proposed framework.

In antitrust class-action litigation, courts are increasingly unlikely to accept the presumption that all class members were harmed by price-fixing among a group of firms or by exclusionary behavior by a single firm. Econometric methods typically applied in antitrust and other settings estimate the average effect of the challenged conduct, but do not inform impact for individual class members. We present classwide econometric methods and statistical tests for detecting the existence (or lack thereof) of common impact and determining what proportion (if any) of the proposed class suffered injury in many class actions. We conclude that econometric tools can meaningfully inform the legal process, even when courts demand proof of common impact.

The concept of light-handed regulation, including light-handed approaches to the regulation of airport services, is discussed. The rationale for the economic regulation of airport services and the traditional approaches used for economic regulation of airport charges are summarized. The evolution of international practice of light-handed regulation is outlined, including the experience with minimal regulation across monopoly industries in New Zealand and the acceptance of “negotiated settlements” in utility industries in North America. General reasons for moving to light-handed regulation of airports include the disadvantages of the price cap approach in practice and the benefits of facilitating greater negotiation between airports and users. Comparisons are made between alternative approaches to light-handed regulation of airport services, including price and quality of service monitoring, information disclosure regulation and negotiate-arbitrate regulation, approaches that have been applied to airport services in Australia and New Zealand. The role and nature of the incentives under each approach are discussed. The chapter concludes that whether light-handed regulation provides a suitable alternative approach to direct regulation depends on the market circumstances and the design characteristics of the light-handed approach.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

Social studies of price-setting are generally focused on the production of prices in the markets. This chapter is about the different types of prices and the exploitation of one price type for commercial purposes. The twofold nature of prices (technical and rhetorical), consolidated here in a recommendation algorithm, is defined, through an ethnographic case study of start-up company in France, from 2014 to 2015. The price is thus considered as a good in itself, which not only has to be produced but sold (and not always by honest means), opening the way to an anthropological critique of the “reality of prices.”

Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among market sellers in Equatorial Guinea’s capital Malabo at the height of its oil-boom in 2010–2012, this paper explores how prices were negotiated and set. It describes how the marketplace constitutes an important institution in Guinean society, not only as a site for provisioning, but also as a space for fostering relationships, engaging in politics and seeking social justice. The case of Equatorial Guinea helps us to re-think the notion of the just price as it is established through contingent and negotiated relations between traders, their customers and powerful political actors, rather than being the outcome of supply and demand or the result of struggles over the production and reproduction of labour. The emphasis on the political dimension of the just price speaks to key debates in the moral economy literature.

The chapter will document the Canadian reaction, as reflected in the demand of New Zealand, that Canada fundamentally alters its dairy supply management system in order to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The Canadian government has resolutely refused to do so, supported wholeheartedly by dairy farmers throughout the country. This is in part because of the effect such an action would have on rural spaces and the debilitating result it would have on Canadian dairy production. As well, the chapter will address the issue of the cost of dairy products in New Zealand as compared with Canada. Part of this analysis will focus on the role of supermarkets in determining the price structure of milk in both Canada and New Zealand. Finally, the chapter will offer an examination of the New Zealand system as represented by Fonterra and the Canadian system as epitomized by dairy supply management.