Simple pricing schemes for consumers with evolving values

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chawla, Shuchi; Devanur, Nikhil R.; Karlin, Anna R.; Sivan, Balasubramanian
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Amazon.com; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Alphabet Inc.; Google Incorporated
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2022.03.012
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 344-360
• 关键词: Evolving values; Pay-per-play; Free trial; Buy-it-now; Risk-robust revenue; martingale

摘要

We consider a pricing problem where a buyer is interested in purchasing/using a good, such as an app or music or software, repeatedly over time. The consumer discovers his value for the good only as he uses it, and the value evolves with each use. In this paper, we explore the performance of a class of pricing mechanisms that are extremely simple for both the buyer and the seller to use: the seller offers the product for free for a certain number of uses, and then charges an appropriate fixed price per usage. The buyer reacts to prices myopically without worrying about how his value evolves in the future. We show that under certain assumptions, a pricing mechanism of this form is approximately optimal regardless of the buyer's risk profile or fine details of the value evolution process.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.