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Pay what you want (PWYW) is a participative pricing mechanism that permits customers complete freedom to choose prices. PWYW literature reports the influence of external reference price (ERP) on customers' price decisions and payments. The current research examines the influence of ERP presence, salience and understanding at the seller level by analysing customers' perceptions of seller price image dimensions and purchase intentions.

Study 1 tests the impact of ERP presence and salience in controlled lab settings while Study 2 takes this investigation further by including the moderating effect of ERP understanding on seller price image dimensions and purchase intentions in online settings.

Results illustrate the positive impact of ERP presence on all seller price image dimensions excluding the perceived price level. Perceived price fairness mediates the impact of ERP presence on perceived value. ERP salience positively impacts price processability. ERP presence and salience attached to it positively impact customers' purchase intentions through seller price image dimensions.

This is possibly the first paper to investigate the ERP effect on seller price image dimensions in a PWYW context that lacks fixed posted prices.

Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) is a pricing strategy implemented in a variety of settings like supermarkets and museums, in which consumers determine the price they are willing to pay for a product or service based on their perceived utility. The authors propose an analytical model to investigate the impact of PWYW delivery pricing on the online food delivery (OFD) platforms.

Using a game-theoretic model, the authors characterize the equilibrium as a function of the platform's average delivery cost and the consumer's social preferences parameters like fairness and reciprocity. The authors derive the parametric conditions under which PWYW generates higher profits for the platform compared to the traditional pay-as-asked delivery pricing.

For the PWYW strategy to be profitable, the average delivery cost to the platform should be low. Therefore, OFD platform managers should focus on reducing delivery costs. The authors also identify the feasible region in which the platform managers need to maintain the consumer's social preferences.

Under PWYW, the authors recommend that the platform managers impose a minimum delivery fee which consumers can use as a benchmark to minimize zero delivery fee payments and consumers' free-riding tendencies simultaneously. This allows OFD platforms to extract online orders from highly price-conscious consumers.

This is one of the first studies to explore the innovative application of PWYW to a particular segment of delivery pricing in OFD platforms. The authors establish that the overall consumer surplus and social welfare are higher under the PWYW strategy, forming a solid ground for its implementation in OFD platforms.

This study highlights the impact of mental accounts on a user's decision-making regarding payment schemes and aims to determine the pricing strategy for the first-enjoy-after-pay service offered by the two-sided media platforms.

This study establishes a game-theoretic model and utilizes backward induction to derive the equilibrium price by maximizing the monopolist's profit.

The findings indicate that the conditions for a two-sided media platform to offer the first-enjoy-after-pay service depend on the trade-off between pleasure attenuation and pain buffering and the effect of time discounts. Moreover, the authors found that the time discount is a critical factor in determining pricing strategies under various payment schemes offered by the platform.

This work adopts a uniform pricing strategy for users who opt for either immediate or post-payment schemes. Nevertheless, it is important to note that this approach has limitations in terms of offering discriminatory pricing for those who choose both payment schemes.

This analytical work provides valuable insights for two-sided media platforms to optimize their payment scheme strategies and pricing considering the influence of a user's mental account.

In a two-sided media platform, the authors provide applicable conditions for the platform to offer first-enjoy-after-pay service considering the effect of mental accounts. Further, the authors show the optimal pricing strategy under different payment schemes provided by the platform.

This study systematically reviewed pricing research published in leading marketing and hospitality and tourism (H&T) journals between 2010 and 2019. It attempts to concretize the understanding of the evolving patterns of pricing research in both fields and suggests an agenda for future research in H&T.

This study performed keyword co-occurrence analyses and co-citation analyses on the bibliographic data of 575 articles from marketing and H&T journals. Content analysis was applied to investigate the emerged topics in H&T.

The marketing discipline showed a persistent focus on research themes including price promotion, reference price, price fairness and pricing strategy. The H&T domain experienced a significant content enrichment of preexistent research topics. H&T scholars showed a growing interest in studying pricing for sharing economy accommodations and the interplay between pricing and electronic word-of-mouth. While marketing research applied theories from multiple disciplines as the theoretical foundations, H&T studies adopted the hedonic pricing model as an overarching theory.

Future pricing research in H&T may incorporate theories from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and anthropology to broaden the scope of the study. Besides, innovative study designs and complex data analysis techniques should be encouraged. Topicwise, H&T scholars can dive deeper into price promotion and distribution channel price management.

This is the first study consolidating the pricing literature in H&T and marketing. It also suggests the potential research directions for researchers.

Despite retailers' growing use of lowest‐price refund policies, little is understood about how consumer satisfaction is influenced by them. This paper examines the potential role of market price volatility and store image on consumers' satisfaction of stores offering a lowest‐price refund.

Between‐subject experimental design is used in which subjects are presented with simulated shopping scenarios. In the shopping simulation lowest price refunds are provided to the subjects under different price volatility and store image conditions. Consumer satisfaction is then measured.

Results indicate that when market price volatility is high consumer satisfaction with lowest‐price refunds tends to be significantly higher for stores with a good image than stores with a poor image. As market price volatility increases, consumer perceptions of value increases for stores with a good image, while it declines for stores with a poor image.

The results of the study are limited by the simulated shopping methodology that is used and the absence of field shopping behavior and covariate satisfaction and refund data from retail stores.

Despite receiving the same outcome, different consumers' satisfaction with lowest‐price refunds may be highly influenced by the environment. Generally, both market price volatility and store image influence consumer satisfaction.

By identifying specific market conditions that influence consumer satisfaction with lowest‐price refunds, it may be critical for certain retailers to mobilize their refund programs.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of country-of-origin (COO) cues and pricing perspective based on the third-party seller's name, intermediary, on consumers' purchasing decisions on e-commerce sites. A model was proposed to investigate consumers' perception toward sellers' online reputation, the mediating role of trust between the reputation of third-party sellers and attitude toward e-commerce as an intermediary, and attitude toward third-party sellers. In addition, this study also looks at the pricing threshold of consumers who are willing to buy from a third-party seller that has a negative COO cue, which is an area that has received limited attention in e-commerce studies.

The paper opted for an experimental study using survey data gathered from general American consumers. Two studies were conducted. One hundred seventy surveys were gathered for study 1, and 171 surveys were gathered for study 2. The two studies had two product snippets which showed an Amazon product page with a list of third-party sellers. For study 2, all variables were kept the same – reviews and ratings for both products and sellers, delivery time, descriptions, e-commerce as an intermediary and brand of a bag – except for the price.

The findings showed that consumers' perceived reputation of a third-party seller has a positive impact on their attitude toward the seller and toward the e-commerce intermediary. In addition, the role of a positive COO influences attitudes and intentions. However, this influence is moderated by price when price is noticeably higher when compared to an alternative option provided by a seller from a country with a lower COO evaluation. This study suggests that the benefits of a positive COO diminish when a seller with a lower COO evaluation is able to provide a lower price for the product. In study 1, the results show that positive COO trumps negative COO. In study 2, the result shows that consumers lean toward a lower-price product and disregard their evaluation toward the COO. Furthermore, in study 2, results show that in order for the pricing to offset the negative COO attributes of a third-party seller, the price needs to be within 22–30% lower than the American seller's product pricing.

With the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability for the other markets (e.g. Asian consumer market). Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

This study highlights the implications of COO cues such as sellers' names and how they impact consumers' willingness to purchase a product. The second study investigates consumers' willingness to purchase when the pricing for a product sold by a negative COO seller versus a positive COO seller is different in an e-commerce environment. In addition, the second study determines that the role of trust has more impact on consumers' attitude toward a third-party seller than it has on their attitude toward the e-commerce intermediary.

The authors use laboratory experiments to test two self-assessment tax mechanisms for facilitating land assembly. One mechanism is incentive compatible with a complex tax function, while the other uses a flat tax rate to mitigate implementation concerns. Sellers publicly declare a price for their land. Overstating its true value is penalized by using the declared price to assess a property tax; understating its value is penalized by allowing developers to buy the property at the declared price. The authors find that both mechanisms increase the rate of land assembly and gains from trade relative to a control in which sellers’ price declarations have no effect on their taxes. However, these effects are statistically insignificant or transitory. The assembly rates in our self-assessment treatments are markedly higher than those of prior experimental studies in which the buyer faces bargaining frictions, such as costly delay or capital constraints.

Drawing on open systems theory, this study aims to investigate the direct and moderating effects of information collaboration in the pre-sale stage, transaction management collaboration in the transaction stage and customer service collaboration in the post-sale stage on the linkages of the online–offline store image and the market performance of small sellers.

Data were collected from multiple sources, including self-reported and online objective data from 148 small restaurants that simultaneously sell online and offline, for validating the developed research model. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

This study illustrates the direct effects of an online store’s image and online–offline collaborations on the market performance of small stores. This study further reveals the boom-bust moderating effects of different collaborations between online–offline images and market performance.

Small stores should be aware of the importance of information congruence and functional integration concerning online–offline collaboration. They should also recognize the paradoxical intervening effects of online–offline collaboration on different channels and arrange appropriate collaboration tactics.

This study presents a significant contribution to the open systems theory by revealing both constructive and destructive properties of the online–offline collaborative system with offline-to-online targeting. Vertically differentiated online–offline collaboration may strengthen one side of the store image but weaken the other side for promoting the market performance of small stores.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of internal reference price (IRP) in a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) price setting. Specifically, it examines the effects of altruism, social desirability and price consciousness as the antecedents of IRP and consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), future purchase intention and attitude toward the seller as the outcomes of IRP.

The data for the study were collected from 272 respondents through a structured survey and analyzed through structural equation modeling technique using AMOS 22.0.

Altruism and social desirability positively influence IRP whereas price consciousness influences IRP negatively. IRP mediates the effects of altruism, social desirability and price consciousness on WTP, future purchase intention and attitude toward the seller.

PWYW pricing strategy can help attract consumers with self-less characteristics or a desire to behave in a socially appropriate manner but not those who are highly price conscious as reflected by the differences in the way in which their IRPs influence their WTP, future purchase intention and attitude toward the seller.

This paper introduces a parsimonious framework to explain how three consumer characteristics influence consumers’ pricing decisions in PWYW context. The finding that the effects of antecedent variables on WTP, attitude and future purchase intention are mediated by IRP provides new insights that have not been explored earlier.

Examines the phenomenon of online auctions. Begins by developing a theoretical base for understanding how online and in‐person auctions should differ in terms of consumer risk. Online auctions with seller reserve prices are compared to in‐person auctions without seller reserve prices using data from 60 paired sales of collectible figurines. Online auctions are found to exceed in‐person auctions in both mean initial bid prices and mean final sales prices.