Editorial — Behavioral and psychological aspects of b2b pricing

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Abstract

In this paper we define core research questions falling within the domain of behavioral and psychological aspects of B2B pricing. We then present the papers accepted for this special issue. Central research questions are, in our view, all those instances where decisions about price violate basic principles of rational choice. Decisions about price involve two main actors. First is the customer. We are interested in how customers' purchase decisions in B2B exhibit behavioral patterns that are inconsistent with rational choice models. Second is the manager. Managers set prices and in this process are equally susceptible to violating fundamental principles of rational choice. For this special issue we have been able to accept six papers. We welcome the debate that these papers are likely to start.

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    One of the most common heuristics used by shoppers in the B2C market is, “If brand A is more expensive than brand B, A is probably better and more reliable than B.” Under conditions of imperfect information, buyers may perceive price to be a signal of the qualities inherent in a product, which is referred to as the price-quality effect (PQE). The behavioral process of inferring a product's risk from its price level has been extensively researched in B2C settings (Ding, Ross, & Rao, 2010; Rao & Monroe, 1989), and it is similarly studied in the PQE literature (Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2015). Despite its importance in understanding the behavioral response to price stimuli in organizational settings, PQE in B2B settings is still an unexplored theme; only a few studies have been conducted, and they have had contradictory results (Hinterhuber, 2015; Iyer et al., 2015; Monroe et al., 2015).

  • Toward an agent-system contingency theory for behavioral supply chain and industrial marketing research

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    Over the past decades, various industries have experienced outsourcing trends, escalating the importance of buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs), industrial/business-to-business (B2B) marketing, and supply chain management (SCM) (e.g., Hadjikhani & LaPlaca, 2013; Lussier & Hall, 2017; Narayanan & Narasimhan, 2014). Lying at the heart of effective management of these exchanges is the ability to manage various behavioral aspects in the relationships, such as opportunism, coordination, negotiation, mutual adaptation, and responses to various external changes (e.g., Dion & Banting, 1988; Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2015; Mesquita & Brush, 2008). These behavioral elements can have significant performance implications to individual firms in the exchanges, thus gaining attention from scholars in various domains, particularly SCM and industrial marketing.

  • Pricing strategy: A review of 22 years of marketing research

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    Finally, the psychological aspects of pricing strategy have attracted ongoing research interest, but with a clear focus on B2C markets. Some recent publications address pricing in B2B markets (see Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2015), yet further research is needed to understand, for example, how psychological factors influence managers' pricing strategy choices (see Hunt & Forman, 2006). Research is needed on customers' involvement in participative pricing, international and export pricing for services, pricing strategy coordination in omnichannel settings, and the psychological aspects of pricing strategy choices in B2B markets.

  • Partitioned pricing, price fairness perceptions, and the moderating effects of brand relationships in SME business markets

    2017, Journal of Business Research
    Citation Excerpt :

    The purpose of this research is to explore partitioned pricing, the strategy of dividing the price of a product offering into two or more mandatory components (Morwitz, Greenleaf, & Johnson, 1998), and its effects on price fairness perceptions in a B2B context. This objective furthers the efforts of recent literature which seek to understand managers' behavioral pricing effects in business markets (Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2015; Homburg et al., 2014; Iyer, Xiao, Sharma, & Nicholson, 2015; Monroe et al., 2015). Additionally, we add to the growing literature on the importance of branding in business markets and the influence of managers' emotions (i.e., positive and negative affect) on business purchase situations (Brown, Zablah, Bellenger, & Johnston, 2011; Leek & Christodoulides, 2012) by examining how buying managers' relationship with a brand and related emotions impact the relationship between partitioned pricing and price fairness perceptions.

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