Social Network-Based Discriminatory Pricing Strategy

Mengze Shi

Marketing Letters, 2003, vol. 14, issue 4, 239-256

Abstract: In this paper we study such pricing practices like MCI's Friends and Family Program that employ price discriminations on the basis of callers' social ties. We characterize a consumer's personal communication network by the number of strong and weak ties that the consumer has. We then derive a consumer's demand for communication service from the structure of the consumer's personal communication network. A monopoly firm's social network-based discriminatory pricing strategy consists of a menu of price plans, each plan targeting at one type of social networks. Our paper provides useful guidelines for the design of optimal social network-based discriminatory pricing strategies. We show that a firm may offer price discounts to communications between "friends and family members" in order to extract a larger profit from communications between callers with weak ties.

Date: 2003
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