ABSTRACT

Drawing on 55 interviews with executives across five online fashion retailers, this paper explores the challenges of price setting and management. We develop a descriptive model of ‘locked-in’ pricing practice to explain organisational routines focused on cost-plus pricing, alignment with competitor prices and historical pricing. Drivers include the complex and uncertain outcomes of pricing, and lack of investment in leading-edge pricing methodologies, together with inadequate training and pricing ownership. Outcomes comprise an aversion to price risk-taking, sees decisions guided by heuristics and a lack of openness to alternative pricing methods. We offer implications for pricing practice to overcome these locked-in behaviours and suggest that research addresses challenges encountered in the implementation of new pricing techniques in organisational settings to narrow the gap between theory and practice.

摘要

本文利用对五家在线时尚零售商高管的 55 次采访，探讨了价格设定和管理方面的挑战。我们开发了一个“锁定”定价实践的描述性模型，以解释专注于成本加成定价、与竞争对手价格和历史定价保持一致的组织例程。驱动因素包括定价的复杂和不确定结果，缺乏对前沿定价方法的投资，以及培训和定价所有权不足。结果包括对价格冒险的厌恶，看到启发式指导的决策以及对替代定价方法缺乏开放性。