Relationship Organization and Price Delegation: An Experimental Study

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lim, Noah; Ham, Sung H.
• 署名单位: University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; George Washington University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2013.1778
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 586-605
• 关键词: sales management; Experimental economics; behavioral economics; price delegation

摘要

Price delegation to the salesforce is a practice widely adopted by firms. This paper examines the relationship between price delegation and managerial profits using a laboratory economics experiment. A novel feature of our experiment is that we study how varying the relationship organization of the sales manager and salesperson to allow for (1) requests by the salesperson for the manager to choose price delegation, and for (2) the manager to award a small bonus after observing the salesperson's decisions, can affect behavior. The results show that, contrary to the theoretical prediction, managers choose price delegation frequently and salespeople respond reciprocally, leading to higher manager profits under price delegation. Moreover, this behavior increases when requests and bonuses are allowed. We show that a behavioral economics model that incorporates positive reciprocity can explain these results well.