Signaling Through Pricing by Service Providers with Social Preferences

Signaling Through Pricing by Service Providers with Social Preferences Baojun Jiang, Jian Ni, and Kannan Srinivasan, Marketing Science 2014, 33:5 , 641-654

38 Pages Posted: 17 Apr 2016

See all articles by Baojun Jiang

Baojun Jiang

Washington University in Saint Louis - John M. Olin Business School

Jian Ni

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business

Kannan Srinivasan

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business

Date Written: December 10, 2013

Abstract

In many services markets such as consulting, auto-repair, financial planning and healthcare, the service provider may have more information about the customer’s problem than the customer, and different customers may impose different costs on the service provider. In principle, the service provider should ethically care about the customer’s welfare, but it is possible that a provider may maximize only its own profit. Moreover, the customer may not know ex ante whether the provider is ethical or purely self-interested. We develop a game-theoretic model to investigate pricing strategies and the market outcome in services markets where the provider has two-dimensional private information—about her own type (whether ethical or self-interested) and about the customer’s condition (whether serious or minor). We show that, in a less ethical market, a self-interested provider will charge different prices based on the customer’s condition whereas an ethical provider will charge the same price for both conditions. In contrast, in a more ethical market, both the self-interested and the ethical provider will charge the same uniform price to both types of customers. Interestingly, both market efficiency and the customer’s ex ante expected surplus might be lower in a more ethical market than in a less ethical one.

Keywords: social preference, signaling, credence goods, pricing, behavioral economics, asymmetric information

Suggested Citation

Jiang, Baojun and Ni, Jian and Srinivasan, Kannan, Signaling Through Pricing by Service Providers with Social Preferences (December 10, 2013). Signaling Through Pricing by Service Providers with Social Preferences Baojun Jiang, Jian Ni, and Kannan Srinivasan, Marketing Science 2014, 33:5 , 641-654 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2761963

Baojun Jiang

Washington University in Saint Louis - John M. Olin Business School ( email )

One Brookings Drive
Campus Box 1156
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
United States
3149353315 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://apps.olin.wustl.edu/faculty/Jiang/

Jian Ni (Contact Author)

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business ( email )

1016 Pamplin Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/jiannicmu/

Kannan Srinivasan

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business ( email )

5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

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