Dynamic pricing with reference price dependence

Abstract: A firm that accounts for consumer behavior sets the selling price of a product considering the reference price of consumers. In the literature, a reference price is usually modeled as depending on past selling prices. That is, past selling prices implicitly constrain the current selling price of a product. In this article, the author explicitly measures this constraint with an optimal control framework. He works on the structural properties of a general demand function, which depends on both selling and reference prices. Analytical results prove the following claims. Adjusting reference prices effects increase the price elasticity of demand, the demand function becoming flatter. Thus, the reference price effect weakens the market power of the firm. Also, the reference price effect constitutes a main driver of the dynamics of the selling price. But contrary to intuition, selling price dynamics does not systematically imitate reference price dynamics.

Keywords: Dynamic pricing; Optimal control; behavioral pricing; reference price dependence; behavioral pricing; reference price dependence; optimal control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-mkt
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-01440305v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Economics , 2016, 10 (2016-22), pp.1-17. ⟨10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2016-22⟩

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Journal Article: Dynamic pricing with reference price dependence (2016)
Working Paper: Dynamic pricing with reference price dependence (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01440305

DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2016-22

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