 Is transparency a good thing? How online price transparency and variability can benefit firms and influence consumer decision makingRichard C. Hanna, Katherine N. Lemon and Gerald E. Smith Business Horizons, 2019, vol. 62, issue 2, 227-236 Abstract: The internet has empowered consumers and changed the way they search and shop for products and services by increasing the availability and transparency of pricing and other comparative information. However, what is less clear from a managerial perspective is just how transparent pricing information should be. While it might seem that increasing price transparency would reduce consumer search, we find that it may actually increase search and delay. In this article, we review the use of firms’ application of price transparency in practice and propose that specific types of information can influence how transparent prices are to consumers, and how such transparency can influence consumer decisions in a way that is beneficial for the firm. We focus on a specific form of transparency: whether or not the consumer knows the range of pricing. We also discuss whether a high variability pricing approach versus a low variability pricing approach influences consumer decision making—and whether this influence is moderated by transparency. Keywords: Price transparency; Pricing strategy; Price communication; Yield management; Purchase decision (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bushor:v:62:y:2019:i:2:p:227-236 DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2018.11.006 Access Statistics for this article Business Horizons is currently edited by C. M. Dalton More articles in Business Horizons from Elsevier |
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