• Media type: Report; E-Book
  • Title: Experimenting with purchase history based price discrimination: A comment
  • Contributor: Tolksdorf, Michel [Author]
  • Published: München und Berlin: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition, 2022
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: Behavior-based price discrimination ; D43 ; pricing experiment ; L13
  • Origination:
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  • Description: Brokesova, Deck and Peliova [Int. J. Ind. Organ. 37 (2014) 229-237] have shown that comparative static results from two-period behavior-based pricing models hold in laboratory experiments, but they observed significant differences from point predictions. We report findings in conformity with these point predictions throughout a uniform pricing benchmark, a replication of Brokesova, Deck and Peliova's behavior-based pricing treatment and a follow-up experiment. Reference dependence seems to shift participants' second-period pricing behavior upwards. A post hoc analysis shows that considering myopic consumers instead of strategic consumers explains a downward shift of first-period prices and rationalizes the findings of Brokesova, Deck and Peliova. Volatile price levels affect price-based welfare measures such as sellers' profits and customers' total costs. We show that transport costs serve as a robust welfare measure, alleviating the impact of distorted prices. These findings are relevant for the design of experiments and when assessing the efficiency of experimental markets.
  • Access State: Open Access