TY - JOUR
T1 - Putting a price on user innovation
T2 - How consumer participation can decrease perceived price fairness
AU - Blank, Ashley Stadler
AU - Bolton, Lisa E.
N1 - Funding Information:
Ashley Stadler Blank ([email protected]), assistant professor of marketing, Xavier University, Williams College of Business, ML 1214, 3800 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45207. Lisa E. Bolton ([email protected]), professor of marketing, Frank and Mary Jean Smeal Research Fellow, Pennsylvania State University, Smeal College of Business, 441 Business Building, University Park, PA 16802. The authors thank Hans Baumgartner, Gary Lilien, Anna Mattila, Margaret Meloy, Johanna Slot, and marketing faculty and doctoral students at the Pennsylvania State University for their helpful comments and suggestions. The authors also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Smeal College of Business at the Pennsylvania State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 the Association for Consumer Research.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/7/1
Y1 - 2019/7/1
N2 - Consumer participation allows firms and consumers to innovate through the joint creation of products—a rapidly growing and dramatic shift in the way consumers acquire products in the marketplace. Building on past consumer participation and behavioral pricing research, we investigate how consumer participation affects price perceptions and the process by which these perceptions form. While past research suggests consumer participation increases price perceptions, we argue it decreases price perceptions when participation costs are salient. Across four studies, we show that participation costs are not always salient prior to purchase (e.g., when psychological distance and self-efficacy are high) but that managerial interventions intended to support consumer participation—including advertising, product trial, and product support—can inadvertently backfire by making participation costs salient and reducing price perceptions for participation-based products. Thus, we provide evidence of a potential drawback of consumer participation, which has pricing and competition implications.
AB - Consumer participation allows firms and consumers to innovate through the joint creation of products—a rapidly growing and dramatic shift in the way consumers acquire products in the marketplace. Building on past consumer participation and behavioral pricing research, we investigate how consumer participation affects price perceptions and the process by which these perceptions form. While past research suggests consumer participation increases price perceptions, we argue it decreases price perceptions when participation costs are salient. Across four studies, we show that participation costs are not always salient prior to purchase (e.g., when psychological distance and self-efficacy are high) but that managerial interventions intended to support consumer participation—including advertising, product trial, and product support—can inadvertently backfire by making participation costs salient and reducing price perceptions for participation-based products. Thus, we provide evidence of a potential drawback of consumer participation, which has pricing and competition implications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090516317&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85090516317&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1086/703566
DO - 10.1086/703566
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090516317
SN - 2378-1815
VL - 4
SP - 256
EP - 268
JO - Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
JF - Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
IS - 3
ER -