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There is a widespread push by government and private payers to make the prices of health care services more transparent to consumers. The main goal is to promote more effective consumer shopping; secondary goals include promoting provider competition and reducing pricing variation. There are several headwinds opposing these efforts. One problem is that there may be several valid reasons for why price variations persist. Another is that provider (and other health care) markets are not very competitive, and sometimes widespread information about prices may make them even less so. A third is that price discrimination may be economically efficient. Any analysis of price transparency must take the specific market setting into account. This chapter analyzes markets characterized by monopolistic, oligopolistic, and competitive conditions to determine when and under what economic and managerial circumstances price transparency will be useful.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that consumer choice be guided by price fairness judgements to increase consumer satisfaction and subsequently enhance market efficiency. Consumers en masse lack the information to judge price fairness, thereby causing their ability to influence the economy to be overlooked.

This is an argumentative and conceptual work that aims to initiate a debate on this important yet unexplored issue. The arguments presented in the paper are based on economic and technological considerations.

The measure for enabling a consumer price fairness judgement is unit cost information – the cost incurred by a firm to produce a product and/or service. The benefits and challenges stemming from the availability of unit cost information (i.e. cost transparency) to consumers and companies are presented and the likely impact of cost transparency on addressing information asymmetries between buyers and sellers are discussed.

Although a significant body of knowledge exists on issues such as price transparency and how it is driven and enabled by the growth of the Internet, there is little or no evidence of research yet on issues related to cost transparency. The authors believe this work would create a new line of research for scholarly community leading to an impact on practice.

Since Jan. 1, 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule requiring hospitals publish their “standard charges” (also called “charge description masters” or “chargemasters”) in a public, machine-readable format has been in effect. The research at hand assesses hospital compliance with the federal regulation. In addition, a sentiment analysis of the chargemaster webpages compared to hospital homepages is performed to assess the consumer friendliness of the content in terms of language usage. A stratified sample of 212 hospitals was used to conduct observations. Strata were based on patient satisfaction scores drawn from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of health care Providers and Systems survey, and controls for hospital bed size and geographic US census region were utilized from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Descriptive statistics are presented, and chi-square testing is used to test for statistically significant differences. Key results are presented for compliance and sentiment. Most hospitals' websites are not presenting chargemaster data in a way that is readily collectable or comparable to other facilities. In addition, the tone of language used on chargemaster transparency webpages is generally more negative than that of hospitals' homepages. In particular, the messaging on transparency pages routinely suggests consumers to not use the data for decision-making purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of post-trade transparency on price efficiency and price discovery.

The authors use an exogeneous change in market transparency in the Taiwan Stock Exchange that mandates the disclosure of unexecuted orders of the five best bid and ask prices after each trade, and conduct an event study analysis.

After the change, price efficiency enhances for both large and small firms, although the impact on stock prices is greater when the firm is larger. The authors also find that post-change trading reveals more private information for large firms but more public information for small firms. The findings support the view that transparency has a positive impact on market quality.

The paper adds to a large body of literature investigating the relationship between transparency and market behavior, especially the ongoing debate about whether trading transparency positively affects price dynamics. The findings also have important policy implications for the regulators.

Developing green consumption, organic and green meat and poultry consumption have been increased recently. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of food’s sensory characteristics (e.g. organic food beliefs) and non-food factors (e.g. price transparency) on consumers’ green purchase behavior. So, according to the moderating role of price transparency, affecting factors on green chicken purchase intention and behavior are examined.

Evaluating the model, the authors used measures from previous research. The authors distributed questionnaire in four chain stores in four different geographical regions in Tehran. The structural model and relations were examined by using Smart PLS 2.0 software to simultaneously estimate the measurement and structural models.

Structural equation analysis revealed that level of trust, consumer’s organic food beliefs and perceived environmental responsibility have positive impact on green purchase intention. Also price transparency moderator role confirmed that moderators can affect consumers’ actual behavior.

As our sample was just from Tehran, the research results may lack generalizability to all people in Iran. Therefore, future researchers are encouraged to retest the proposed model in other cities and also in other countries with different level of economic development.

This paper includes suggestions for managers and producers to develop green food products consumption especially green chicken. Also it has implications for spreading out green consumption among people with high environmental involvement.

Despite conducted research, the moderating role of price transparency has been used only rarely to investigate consumers’ green purchase behavior.

This research aims to examine the influence of brand signals (transparency, innovativeness and reputation) on brand trust and price fairness toward organic food restaurant brand.

The empirical data were gathered with the survey instrument from respondents who had previously visited organic food restaurant. The formulated hypotheses were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

The collected data demonstrated the positive effect of brand signals on brand trust and price fairness. Trust in organic food restaurant brand was found to positively impact both price fairness and brand loyalty. Additionally, the results provided evidence of the positive linkage between price fairness and brand loyalty. Among brand signals, brand transparency exerted the greatest impact on brand trust and price fairness. The findings also indicated the significant indirect linkage of brand signals on restaurant brand loyalty through brand trust and price fairness.

Through the lens of signaling theory and equity theory, this study provides novel insights into how brand signals contribute to brand trust, price fairness and organic food restaurant brand loyalty. The managerial implications for implementing brand strategies for organic food restaurants were discussed.

The purpose of this study is to understand “Why Should Companies Embrace Cost Transparency”.

This paper is a thought piece in response to the paper by Simintiras et al. (2015), “Should Consumer’s Request Cost Transparency?”

Arguments based on past research and company practices show that companies practicing cost transparency can increase their customer following, brand loyalty, differentiation and ultimately the profits.

The paper showcases examples of how companies have implemented cost transparency to differentiate their customer offerings. The paper also shows that conscious consumers are now demanding more cost transparency, and companies have already started to heed this call.

The paper specifically outlines arguments and recent examples to show why companies should embrace cost transparency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the dialogue, access, risk assessment and transparency model of value co-creation processes (dialogue, access, risk and transparency) on new service market performance (NSMP) with the mediating role of value-informed pricing in the context of business-to-business (B2B).

The data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 230 managers of the telecommunications industry in Malaysia and analyzed through structural equation modeling using SmartPLS v.3.3.3 software.

This study found that dialogue and transparency are predictors of NSMP. The findings indicate that value-informed pricing plays a mediating role in the relationship between dialogue and transparency with NSMP.

Disclosing pricing related information, providing up to date information to the customers, making clear to the customers about new offerings would certainly influence value-informed pricing. Thus, managers can enhance customer engagement in the interaction processes to better understand customer expectations of new services and how the new services should be priced.

The link between value co-creation and value-informed pricing has been only conceptualized in literature. This study has opened a new stream of research, examining the relationship of interactional-based value co-creation process with value-informed pricing and NSMP in the context of B2B relationship from providers’ perspective.

This study identifies predictors of customers' trust in banks at both the banking system level and toward individual banks. A mixed methods technique is utilized which combines both customers' and bankers' perspectives.

The study utilizes mixed methods, including a questionnaire survey of 1017 bank customers from retail banks, together with qualitative research derived from ten interviews with Israeli bankers.

The quantitative study shows that transparency is mediated between perception of price fairness and integrity of the banking system level and trust toward individual banks. Customer satisfaction was found to be a mediator between integrity of the banking system and trust in the individual bank. Qualitative analysis of interviews with bankers yielded six themes: integrity, transparency, price perception, service, bank image and regulation.

This study adumbrates specific aspects of the banking system and of individual banks. Cultural differences pertaining to trust might validate the findings when the study is replicated in other countries.

Since customers are universally considered as key bank stakeholders, insights are provided concerning determinants at the banking system level and toward individual banks, both crucial to explain trust. From both managerial and policymaking perspectives, this study contains valuable practical implications.

Promotional cues related to notions of fair prices or pricing designed to fit consumers’ needs are prevalent for many service offers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how both customers’ price fairness and idiosyncratic fit perceptions shape their tariff evaluations.

Two experimental studies involving different tariff types and service contexts test the complex interplay of customers’ perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit with customer and context characteristics on their tariff evaluations.

Customers judge tariffs drawing on both the perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit, driven by the perceived price level of the tariff and the perceived pricing transparency of the firm. Customers’ service usage and consumption goals moderate these effects: heavy users and hedonic consumers indicate lower price sensitivity while focusing more on their transparency perception. The role of perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit for tariff choice depends on the tariff/service context; idiosyncratic fit is important when it is incidental (e.g. flat rates) rather than intentional (i.e. customized tariffs) and when customers lack the expertise or confidence to evaluate price fairness such as in the case of relatively new services.

Prior studies focused on either price fairness or idiosyncratic fit and thus cannot fully explain the complex interplay between both in the context of tariff choice. This paper explicates the conditions that affect the relative importance of both concepts and under which incidental offers are better received than premeditated ones.