Designing Pricing Contracts for Boundedly Rational Customers: Does the Framing of the Fixed Fee Matter?
Designing Pricing Contracts for Boundedly Rational Customers: Does the Framing of the Fixed Fee Matter?
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.1070.0788
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发表时间：
2008-04
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Teck-Hua Ho;Juanjuan Zhang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Teck-Hua Ho;Juanjuan Zhang
定价合同的格式在不同的业务环境中有很大的不同，一个主要的变量是合同是否强制支付固定费用。本文研究了定价契约中固定费用的使用如何影响制造商-零售商渠道的市场结果。标准的经济理论预测，渠道效率随着固定费用的引入而增加，并且不受其框架的影响。我们进行了一个实验室实验来验证这些预测。令人惊讶的是，固定费用的引入未能提高渠道效率。此外，固定费用的框架确实产生了差异：数量折扣的不透明框架比两部分关税的突出框架实现了更高的渠道效率，尽管这两种合同格式在理论上是等同的。为了解释这些异常现象，我们概括了标准的经济模型，允许零售商的公用事业是参考依赖，使前期的固定费用支付被视为损失和随后的零售利润作为收益。我们将这个依赖于参考的效用函数嵌入到一个量子响应均衡框架中，在这个框架中，由于计算的复杂性，零售商可以犯决策错误。这个行为模型的关键预测是，渠道效率降低损失厌恶足够纳什理性的零售商。与这一预测相一致，估计的损失规避系数为1.37，在两部分关税条件下，显着高于1.27的数量折扣条件。同时，在解释数据时，损失厌恶主导了合同复杂性。最后，我们进行了一个后续实验，以确认损失厌恶作为一个行为驱动程序的核心作用。在一种情况下，当我们暂时压缩固定费用支付和零售利润实现时，零售商的损失厌恶程度降低，这支持了损失厌恶理论。在另一个条件下，零售商的合同接受率并没有下降，当我们奖励制造商更高的现金支付每个实验点赚，这排除了竞争的假设，零售商拒绝合同提供由于公平的问题。
The format of pricing contracts varies substantially across business contexts, a major variable being whether a contract imposes a fixed fee payment. This paper examines how the use of the fixed fee in pricing contracts affects market outcomes of a manufacturer-retailer channel. Standard economic theories predict that channel efficiency increases with the introduction of the fixed fee and is invariant to its framing. We conduct a laboratory experiment to test these predictions. Surprisingly, the introduction of the fixed fee fails to increase channel efficiency. Moreover, the framing of the fixed fee does make a difference: an opaque frame as quantity discounts achieves higher channel efficiency than a salient frame as a two-part tariff, although these two contractual formats are theoretically equivalent. To account for these anomalies, we generalize the standard economic model by allowing the retailer's utilities to be reference dependent so that the up-front fixed fee payment is perceived as a loss and the subsequent retail profits as a gain. We embed this reference-dependent utility function in a quantal response equilibrium framework where the retailer is allowed to make decision mistakes due to computational complexity. The key prediction of this behavioral model is that channel efficiency decreases with loss aversion for sufficiently Nash-rational retailers. Consistent with this prediction, the estimated loss-aversion coefficient is 1.37 in the two-part tariff condition, significantly higher than 1.27 in the quantity discount condition. At the same time, loss aversion dominates contract complexity in explaining the data. Lastly, we conduct a follow-up experiment to confirm the central role of loss aversion as a behavioral driver. In one condition, the retailer becomes less loss averse when we temporally compress the fixed fee payment and the realization of retail profits, which supports the loss aversion theory. In the other condition, the retailer's contract acceptance rate does not decline when we reward the manufacturer a higher cash payment for each experimental point earned, which rules out the competing hypothesis that the retailer rejects contract offers due to fairness concerns.