The current JACR issue focuses on one of the most central concepts in all of marketing – pricing. We asked co-editors Haipeng (Allan) Chen (University of Kentucky), David Hardesty (University of Kentucky), Akshay Rao (University of Minnesota), and Lisa E. Bolton (Pennsylvania State University) about their experiences as co-editors and their goals for this special issue.
As one of the four Ps of marketing, price represents a marketing stimulus that consumers encounter for almost all of their purchases. Despite the apparent importance, pricing research perhaps doesn’t receive the research attention it should. “I personally feel that pricing is a relatively under-investigated phenomenon given its importance to marketing,” noted Lisa Bolton. Research on pricing is as old as marketing and pricing research changed over the past decades. So, it was a timely effort to bring attention to behavioral pricing and focus this special issue on groundbreaking research in this area.
Behavioral Pricing research is alive and well and will
continue to be so for a long time.
Akshay Rao
The entire editorial team was excited about the response their call for papers received. “I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm that the marketing community showed from the very beginning,” said Allan Chen. The special issue received a historically large number of submissions and the diverse set of articles that were ultimately published are a testament to this enthusiasm. Articles in the special issue cover important pricing phenomena, including how framing (payment method, zero interest, denomination), promotion frequency and timing, price ending, individual differences (physical pain, genes), retailer’s price image, and sociocultural factors influence consumers price perceptions and non-price behaviors.
Looking back at the submissions, topics covered, and methods employed across manuscripts, Akshay Rao’s perhaps summarized the state of behavioral pricing research best: “The sheer volume of interesting and thought-provoking work on price perception, memory, biases, neuro-scientific methods to unravel pricing issues, the biological bases for price responsiveness and on and on indicate that the world of Behavioral Pricing research is alive and well and will continue to be so for a long time.”
Besides showcasing eleven intriguing pricing projects, the editorial team hopes this special issue will inspire new and creative behavioral pricing research. “I am hopeful the special issue will generate a great deal of future research in the area,” according to David Hardesty. To stimulate future research, the editorial team surveyed pricing experts and practitioners to identify major areas of behavioral pricing research that need more research attention.
Editors of the JACR Behavioral Pricing issue will be holding a webinar on Wednesday, February 17 (9:00 am to 10:30 am EST) in which authors will present research contained in this latest issue.
Click here to register today: https://gatton.uky.edu/about-us/stay-connected/events/2021-02-17/jacr-special-issue-behavioral-pricing-webinar
Click here for a full list of articles published in Behavior Pricing on JACR’s website: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jacr/2021/6/1
