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The purpose of this paper is to study how consumers process price frames of product bundles (product plus surcharge) and discount offers to weigh contentious positions between the weighted-additive and the reference-dependent models. Further, some research suggests bundling, while others suggest partitioning to be a more effective pricing strategy. This research evaluated the relative influences of different price frames to examine which model is supported and what are the boundary conditions for price framing.

Two online studies were conducted on Indian adults who had prior experiences of online purchases. They were asked to judge attractiveness of bundles (product along with shipping surcharge). Discounts were shown on the product, the surcharge or on the overall bundle either as partitioned prices or as a bundle.

Across two studies on low- and high-priced products, discounts on shipping surcharge increased attractiveness of the bundle compared to a similar discount on the product or on the overall bundle, supporting the reference-dependent model. Further, for a low-priced product, bundling increased attractiveness, while for a high-priced product, partitioning was more attractive.

More research is needed to examine whether these results translate to other kinds of products, surcharges or discount promotions and in different populations.

This research makes important contributions to theoretical and practical aspects of bundling and partitioned pricing research. It also adds much needed data about evaluation of product bundles with shipping surcharges among Indian customers.

This research seeks to examine differences in perceived shipping charge inflation associated with online promotions presented as reducing base product price, reducing shipping surcharge, or reducing all‐inclusive price and its impact on deal values for shipping charge skeptics and non‐skeptics.

Drawing from research on multi‐component pricing and mental accounting, a laboratory experiment investigates if shipping charge skeptics differ in their perceptions of shipping charge inflation for different presentations of online promotions from non‐skeptics, and if they differ in perceived deal value of economically equivalent promotions presented as reduced product price, reduced shipping charge promotion, or reduced all‐inclusive price for high and low priced items with small or large shipping fees at retail websites.

Analyses show that shipping charge skeptics differ from non‐skeptics in their perceptions of shipping charge inflation and deal values for different online promotions only when the surcharge is large relative to the base price. Reduced price promotions are most attractive for high‐priced items with low surcharge but least attractive for large surcharge sizes. For large surcharge sizes, shipping charge skeptics prefer reduced all‐inclusive price promotions to reduced shipping promotions, while non‐skeptics prefer reduced shipping promotions to reduced all‐inclusive price promotions.

The results suggest that the effectiveness of various promotion frames at online stores differ based on base price, surcharge size, and consumer skepticism of shipping charge. Robustness of the results obtained at different levels of discount sizes need investigation.

Online retailers that have to charge high shipping fees can use promotions to shift the referent price component used by consumers to calculate savings and mitigate perceptions of shipping or base price inflation. For equivalent dollar savings, retailers can use reduced shipping charge promotions to communicate higher deal values to shipping charge non‐skeptic consumers than reduced base price or reduced all‐inclusive promotions.

This research examines how consumer perceptions of deal values differ, even though objective savings and financial outlay is the same, when promotions are presented as reducing product price versus surcharge.

Slow steaming has been implemented by the main liner shipping companies since 2008. The reduction in vessel speed affects fuel consumption and should be reflected within the fuel surcharges paid by shippers. The purpose of this paper is to assess if this was the case for the main outbound European container trades from the port of Antwerp.

Through an extensive analysis of liner service characteristics, fuel costs and fuel surcharges this paper provides an answer to three research questions: how significant are slow steaming practices in container liner shipping?; what is the impact of slow steaming on fuel consumption and liner service characteristics?; and to what extent has slow steaming changed the relation between fuel costs and fuel surcharges imposed on shippers by shipping lines?

It is found that slow steaming practices are not implemented on all trade routes, but depend on operational aspects such as distances covered and the characteristics of the ships deployed. While it could be expected that the reduction in vessel speed should be reflected within the fuel surcharges paid by shippers, the empirical results show that on most trade routes slow steaming did not fundamentally change the relation between fuel costs and fuel surcharges imposed on shippers by shipping lines.

The paper has practical relevance to actors active in global ocean freight logistics, particularly since its results can be used as input for ongoing debates between shipping lines and shippers on pricing and surcharges in container shipping.

This paper is the first extensive study that makes an explicit link between slow steaming practices and fuel surcharge policies of shipping lines. A method was developed to estimate fuel consumption levels of ships at various speeds and to link the associated fuel costs to real‐life bunker surcharges imposed on shippers by shipping lines.

This paper aims to examine the antecedent of purchase intention: online seller reputation, product category and surcharge.

This paper uses five experimental designs to explore the seller reputation, product category and surcharge effects in Internet shopping. The authors chose one seller of low reputation and one seller of high reputation from Yahoo Mall. ANOVA are used to evaluate the results.

Sellers of high reputation can post higher surcharges to increase the total price paid by the buyer, but sellers of low reputation cannot do so (experiment 1). Moreover, partitioned price will decrease purchase intention for sellers of low reputation more than for sellers of high reputation (experiment 2). Consumers take the longest time to make purchasing decisions when buying credence goods (experiment 3) or buying from sellers of low reputation (experiment 4). The effect of surcharge levied by sellers of low reputation is weakened for consumers with low (vs high) shipping‐charge skepticism (experiment 5).

This study is helpful to online sellers if they can identify their reputation, product category and those consumers who have shipping‐charge skepticism, they can create extra profit through surcharge practice.

The authors’ investigation extends the literature on consumers’ price processing by identifying the important moderators (seller reputation, product category, and elaboration) and probing into the decision process (via the response time). The results suggest prescriptive strategies for online sellers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of a dimension of logistics service quality (delivery time) interacting with shipping charges and purchase importance on customer satisfaction and purchase intentions in an e-commerce context. Uncertainty in terms of perceived ambiguity and perceived riskiness is shown to be the theoretical mechanism that plays a mediating role in the relationships between delivery time and customer satisfaction, as well as between delivery time and purchase intentions.

This study used a scenario-based role playing experiment. Three variables are manipulated in the design of the study – delivery time, shipping charges, and purchase importance. Participant responses (n=360) were collected through Amazon Mechanical Turk with perceptual measures.

Results indicated that increased delivery time significantly increased customers’ perceived ambiguity and perceived riskiness which reduced satisfaction as well as negatively impacted purchase intentions. Further, free shipping reduced customers’ perceived ambiguity when delivery time was lengthy, but strengthened the perception of ambiguity when the delivery time was short.

This paper sheds light on how a dimension of logistics service quality (delivery time) interacts with shipping charges and purchase importance to impact customer satisfaction and purchase intentions. It introduces uncertainty in the form of perceived ambiguity and perceived riskiness, to the logistics service literature as the mechanism that can explain how delivery time interacting with shipping charges and purchase importance impact customer satisfaction and purchase intentions. The implications for online retailers are that they should display separate shipping charges for shorter delivery times but for longer delivery times they should display a total price for the product which includes the shipping cost. Also when the purchase is important to the customer, they should offer shorter shipping time choices if they want to increase customer satisfaction.

This paper aims to study the implication of the stochastic gross-profit-per-day objective on the ship profitability and the ship capacity and speed.

The paper has used the mathematical model and the solution methodology given by El Noshokaty, 2013, 2014, 2017a, 2017b, and SOS, 2019.

The paper finds that if the ship owner follows the rate concept and the cargo demand forecast, he can improve the profitability of his company and be able to select the proper capacities and speeds for the ships used.

The findings are not only useful for the shipping or other cargo transport companies but also for businesses like gas reservoir development, car assembly lines in the industry, cooperative farming and crop harvesting in agriculture, port cargo handling in trade and road paving in construction.

The contribution of this paper lies in notifying the ship owners of the possible profitability improvement and the consequences of building ships of larger capacities and slower speeds.

Pricing the shipping surcharge is a major strategic decision for online retailers, and free shipping promotions are becoming more common among online retailers. The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of last mile pricing strategies on customer attraction and retention in the hypercompetitive online retailing industry. Specifically, this paper investigates the effect of partitioning the shipping surcharge on consumer logistics service quality (LSQ) perceptions and, in turn, purchase behavior.

Employing signaling theory and expectation–disconfirmation theory, hypotheses are derived for two specific points in an online purchase scenario: prepurchase and following a logistics disruption. The hypotheses are tested using a scenario-based experiment with manipulations for the level of shipping surcharge partitioning and the presence of a logistics disruption.

The results suggest that partitioned shipping surcharges influence prepurchase expectations of LSQ satisfaction and amplify the negative effects of logistics disruptions. This, in turn, drives the purchase and repurchase intentions.

The findings inform online retailers of the perceptual and behavioral effects of last mile pricing strategies. Specifically, this research demonstrates how and under what conditioning partitioning the shipping surcharge can influence the attraction and retention of online customers.

This study integrates pricing and LSQ research to assess the black box of consumer purchase behavior. This is one of the first studies to empirically contrast the effects of last mile pricing strategies on consumer expectations and perceptions of LSQ.

A study of the price discounts granted by Morton Salt Company and other producers of table salt in the U.S. on their sales of table salt to grocery wholesalers and retailers. The discounts were found to be illegal under the Robinson-Patman Act by the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court. The Commission and the Court believed that the discounts were unjustified price concessions granted to “large” buyers, consistent with the concerns of the Robinson-Patman Act. However, the evidence indicates that the most common discount – the “carload discount” – was received by virtually all buyers, regardless of the buyer’s size; the other discounts – “annual volume” discounts – though received primarily by “large” buyers, were likely cost based. The history of the discounts and likely reasons why they were granted are explored in detail.

The purpose of this article is to conceptualize dimensions of price salience. Price salience influences price perceptions and deal evaluations. This is especially true when a price consists of more than a single number (multi‐dimensional prices). Yet, the very notion of what makes a price salient remains unanswered. By providing a clear conceptualization of different dimensions of price salience and their influence on price perception, we integrate and extend extant research findings.

By drawing on extant research on price salience and salience in general, the paper develops a framework of how different dimensions of price salience are defined and influence price perception.

The paper identifies the four basic dimensions of price salience: visual, semantic, computational, and magnitude salience. It is argued that each dimension has a unique influence on price perceptions.

Although widely employed as a key variable in pricing research, price salience has not been clearly defined and issues related to price salience are scattered in the literature. By integrating those issues under a single rubric, the paper enable's pricing researchers to tackle issues related to price salience in a systematic way. Further, it offers several propositions regarding price salience that future research could examine.

This article helps practitioners by providing a clear understanding of how each dimension of price salience influence price perceptions. By digesting this article, practitioners can better understand how their price presentations work and better formulate their pricing strategies.

This paper aims to explore how temporal distance influences the evaluation of partitioned pricing.

The effect of temporal distance on the effectiveness of partitioned pricing is tested using data collected through experiments in the USA.

Study 1 reveals that people perceive partitioned pricing as more attractive than combined pricing, but only for a distant event. Study 2 reveals that individuals predisposed to global information processing perceive partitioned pricing as more attractive than combined pricing. However, for individuals who commonly engage in local processing, combined pricing was equally attractive as partitioned pricing. In Study 3, the authors examine a boundary condition and find that the joint effect of temporal distance and partitioned pricing is attenuated when the purchase is made for a gift in which consumers are assumed to pay less attention to a surcharge. In Study 4, the authors examine how partitioned pricing influences a consumer’s choice in terms of temporal distance.

The findings provide practical guidelines to business leaders looking for practical guidelines for pricing policy decisions.

Previous research shows that partitioned pricing is more effective in increasing consumers’ purchase intention and demand than combined pricing. In the present research, the authors introduce temporal distance as an important moderator that affects the effectiveness of partitioned pricing.