Tariff Choice with Consumer Learning and Switching Costs
Tariff Choice with Consumer Learning and Switching Costs
复制标题
DOI：
10.1509/jmkr.48.4.633
复制
发表时间：
2011-08-01
影响因子：
6.1
通讯作者：
Clay, Karen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Goettler, Ronald L.;Clay, Karen
选择固定费率合同的消费者往往没有足够的使用量来保证成本，特别是对于新产品。我们提出并估计了一个关于关税和使用选择的贝叶斯学习模型，该模型在不依赖于行为错误判断或关税特定偏好的情况下解释了这种固定费率偏见。对于新产品，消费者既不确定它们相对于总体均值的效用，也不确定均值本身的效用。我们表明，后一种不确定性放大了先前的方差，这导致消费者在更新信念时更看重他们的私人信号。后验在产品之间是不偏倚的。然而，对于一个给定的产品，未知的平均值产生了“赢家的诅咒”：具有高后值的消费者倾向于高估其效用。这些消费者选择固定费率，并在纠正自己的信念时降低使用量。当转换成本阻止他们改变关税时，固定费率偏见就出现了。使用估计模型，作者发现关税菜单是无效的筛选手段，价格歧视的在线杂货商。当每次使用的资费降低时，预计收入将增加20%，因为更多的消费者选择并继续使用统一的资费。
Consumers choosing flat-rate contracts tend to have insufficient usage to warrant the cost, particularly for new products. We propose and estimate a Bayesian learning model of tariff and usage choice that explains this flat-rate bias without relying on behavioral misjudgments or tariff-specific preferences. For new products, consumers are uncertain about both their utility relative to the population mean and the mean itself. We show that this latter uncertainty inflates prior variances, which leads consumers to weight their private signals more heavily when updating beliefs. Posteriors are unbiased across products. For a given product, however, the unknown mean yields a "winner's curse": Consumers with high posteriors tend to overestimate their utility. These consumers choose fixed-rate tariffs and lower their usage as they correct their beliefs. The flat-rate bias arises when switching costs deter them from changing tariffs. Using the estimated model, the authors find that tariff menus are ineffective screening devices for price discrimination by an online grocer. Predicted revenues increase by 20% when the per-use tariff is dropped, because more consumers choose and stay with the flat rate.