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This research aims to examine how source of funds (paying with company’s funds versus personal funds) affects buyer’s judgments of price fairness and via these judgments, buyer’s response to prices.

A scenario-based experiment is used (N = 200). To test the hypotheses, the authors run moderated mediation regression analyses with the help of the PROCESS macro.

Drawing on fairness heuristics theory, the authors hypothesize and find that relative to when paying with personal funds, when paying with company’s funds, the perceived price difference plays a less significant role, whereas the perceived social acceptability of the pricing practice underlying the price difference plays a more important role in shaping price fairness judgments and, via these judgments, buyer’s response to prices.

The findings generate advice for companies that serve both the business and personal segments (e.g. airlines and hotels). Buyers in the personal segment typically pay with their own money. To persuade these buyers that a price is fair, it is crucial to show that the price represents a good deal for them. Buyers in the business segment often pay with company’s fund. Companies have more flexibility in charging different prices, but they should make sure that the reasons for the price difference are socially acceptable.

This research shows how the relative role of price difference versus social acceptability in price fairness judgments varies as a function of source of funds and how an inconsistency between price difference and its economic impact affects price fairness judgments.

Factors other than job performance might affect judgments about pay fairness for employees doing the same job, and the strength of these factors may differ across national cultures. This study uses a multivariate, policy‐capturing approach to compare the way that characteristics of employees—seniority, education, family size, individual job performance, and work effort—affect judgments about the fairness of pay received by employees in Korea and the United States. Regression models of the determinants of judgments about pay fairness by Korean and U.S. nationals were estimated. Korean pay fairness judgments were found to be relatively more sensitive to differences in seniority, education, and family size, and American pay fairness judgments were relatively more sensitive to variations in individual job performance and work effort.

This paper aims to link conceptually the concepts of price fairness and customer satisfaction and empirically demonstrate the influence of perceived price fairness on satisfaction judgments. Further, it seeks to examine specific factors that influence fairness perceptions including price perception and consumer vulnerability.

The study is conducted in the context of automobile purchases in major German car dealerships. Based on a theoretical conceptualization of the constructs and an empirical pretest, 246 car buyers were surveyed and their fairness perceptions and satisfaction judgments with the car buying process measured.

The research shows that price perceptions directly influence satisfaction judgments as well as indirectly through perceptions of price fairness. Results also indicated that consumers' vulnerability, which is induced by a perceived demand‐supply relationship and the urgency of need from the consumers' side, had a negative effect on perceived price offer fairness.

The research demonstrated the influence of perceived price fairness on satisfaction judgments empirically. The study was conducted in the context of car purchases and the generalizability of the model should be further tested.

The effect of consumer vulnerability implies that sellers should not only avoid exploiting their customers but should also anticipate consumers' potential feelings of being exploited. Being sensitive to the buyers’ psychological state and assuring buyers of fair treatment will enhance perceptions of price fairness without changing the price offer.

Both the direct and indirect effects of price perception on satisfaction judgment were examined in the paper. Specifically, the influences of consumer vulnerability and price procedure fairness on satisfaction judgments are new and contribute to the dual‐entitlement principle and our existing knowledge in price fairness.

In previous experiments where negotiators' fairness judgments have been found to be egocentrically biased, it is possible that the observed bias was caused largely by selective encoding of the background information given to negotiators. The extent to which egocentric fairness judgments were caused by selective encoding, however, cannot be determined from those experiments. In the present study, we tested for the effects of selective encoding by varying the point in time that negotiators learned their role in a simulated wage dispute. Results indicated that, while judgments of a fair settlement point were the most egocentric under conditions that allowed for selective encoding, these conditions were not necessary for the bias to occur; there was a significant degree of egocentric bias even when there was no possibility of selective encoding. Implications of these results for both research and practice are discussed.

From the perspective of customer segmentation, most scholars show more interest in the very important person (VIP) customer’s service experience and satisfaction; however, the way in which ordinary customers view VIP services has received less attention. Based on fairness heuristic theory and social comparison theory, this study aims to examine the impact of the social visibility of VIP services on ordinary customers’ satisfaction and explored the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of this effect.

Two experiments were conducted, Study 1 verified the main effect and mediating effect, Study 2 tested the moderating effect.

The results show that the social visibility of VIP services decreases ordinary customers’ satisfaction and perceived fairness mediates this effect. The deservingness of VIP status moderates the connection between social visibility and perceived fairness.

This research changes the objects of VIP services research and focuses on ordinary customers as its main group and expands the scope of social comparisons among customers.

The findings expand the scope and perspective of research on VIP services and provide guidance to service providers to reduce ordinary customers’ feelings of unfairness so as to improve customer satisfaction.

This study explores the effect of the social visibility of VIP services on ordinary customer satisfaction from the perspective of perceived fairness, as well as the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the effect.

Drawing on the fairness theory, this paper aims to propose a conceptual framework that investigates how co-creation in the failed service delivery (coproduction intensity) and co-creation in the service recovery affect customers’ evaluation of the firm’s competence, justice and ethicalness, and ultimately their willingness to co-create in the future.

Tax services were chosen as the research context. A consumer panel consisting of individuals who live in the USA and have used tax preparation services within the past year was recruited. The first study explores what happens to customers’ ethical perceptions during a failed co-created service encounter. A secondary study investigates what happens to customers’ ethical perceptions in the event that the failed co-created service is recovered.

The findings show that customers’ perceptions of the firm’s abilities and ethics are impeded by coproduction intensity but favorably influenced by co-creation of recovery.

A sense of ethicalness and fairness is violated when co-created service failure occurs, but fortunately, practitioners can count on engaging customers in the service recovery process as co-creators of the solution to positively alter perceived ethicalness and fairness.

Failed co-created services represent an under-researched area in the marketing literature. Current investigations of co-created service failures have largely approached the notion of fairness from a perceived justice perspective without referencing ethical judgments. However, fairness is grounded in basic ethical assumptions of normative treatment. This research is among the first to highlight the importance of perceived ethicalness in the context of co-created service failure and recovery.

This paper aims to propose and empirically document the idea that people’s perceptions of having been treated fairly depend, in part, on whether the explanation provided to them of a product’s pricing is primarily based on the costs of labor (a service) versus materials (goods). Because materials are more fixed and tangible than the effort of labor, it is argued that people will have fewer counterfactual thoughts about how things could have been different with the cost of materials than those associated with labor. This has implications for fairness judgments more generally, as it suggests that people may be uneven in which types of data they attend to when making fairness judgments. Three experiments are presented that empirically test the relationship between the salience of goods versus services in the price paid and the resulting perceptions of fairness. Findings confirm that thoughts of money spent on a service were associated with lesser feelings of fairness than were thoughts of money spent on a good. This research uniquely identifies the mechanism by which some evaluations are considered fairer than others. Implications for organizational processes, such as procedural justice and fair compensation, are discussed.

Three experiments are presented that empirically test the relationship between the salience of goods versus services in the price paid, and the resulting perceptions of fairness.

Findings confirm that thoughts of money spent on a service were associated with lesser feelings of fairness than were thoughts of money spent on a good.

This research uniquely identifies the mechanism by which some evaluations are considered fairer than others. Implications for organizational processes, such as procedural justice and fair compensation, are discussed.

To analyze the role of price fairness perceptions as a construct underlying individuals' transactions.

The paper formulates and empirically tests the hypothesis that price fairness perceptions endogenously determine consumers' expenditures decisions. Economic transactions are viewed as an allocation choice problem with fairness perceptions being an endogenous variable determining problem outcome. A treatment effects model is utilized, allowing for the analysis of the effects that price fairness perceptions exercise upon both the consumers' decision to realize a transaction as well as upon their consequent level of spending.

Consumers do patronize stores and one important variable determining their level of spending is their perceptions of fairness underlying the transaction with a specific provider.

The small usable questionnaire sample may be considered as a limitation. However, the very satisfactory fit of the estimated model allows for the results to be a comparison basis with future findings.

Analysis of price fairness perceptions provides new insights regarding consumer behavior, enhancing the analytical validity of typical household demand models.

Analysis allows for price fairness perceptions to enter a consumer's expenditures equation usually expressed in terms of socio‐economic indicators.

This research seeks to identify three dimensions of price differential policies that influence judgments of the distributive, procedural, and informational justice of the policies and of the trustworthiness of the seller.

Four price differential policies were compared in a between‐subjects design. Subjects responded to scenarios in which they paid more than a friend for the same product because of a particular policy. Policies were compared on perceptions of fairness (using the social justice framework) and on perceptions of the seller's benevolence and credibility.

Consumer judgments of the informational and procedural justice of each policy depend on three key policy dimensions: whether or not all consumers are informed about how a discount could be obtained; whether consumers who received the discount were pre‐selected on the basis of their traits versus whether they received the discount because of some aspect of their transaction process behavior; and whether or not consumers could influence the amount of the price differential. Additionally, perceptions of procedural justice and informational justice have differential influence on the credibility and benevolence dimensions of trust.

The research offers the first empirically based generalizations about designing price differential policies that can minimize negative consumer judgments of the policy and of the seller. Additionally, the use of a social justice framework yields important insights on the multidimensional nature and consequences of fairness judgments.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the concepts of organizational politics, procedural justice, and psychological contract breach can serve as indicators of a global evaluation of the (un)fairness of the organization, and that this general fairness evaluation predicts attitudes and behaviors.

The paper compares the model to one in which the concepts are considered in terms of both their unique effects and the interrelationships among them. In addition, the study examines how psychological contract types are related to each model. A survey of 311 bank employees in Israel was conducted.

The findings show that neither model is strongly superior to the other. This suggests that the three exchange variables can be conceptualized, not only in terms of their unique effects and interrelationships, but also as aspects of one global concept of fairness.

This study suggests that the concepts of organizational politics, procedural justice, and psychological contract breach can serve as indicators of a global evaluation of the (un)fairness of the organization, and that this general fairness evaluation predicts attitudes and behaviors.