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To divide or not to divide? The impact of partitioned pricing on the informational and sacrifice effects of price

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Abstract

Firms often partition a product’s price into two mandatory parts (e.g., the base price of a mail-order DVD and the surcharge for shipping and handling) instead of charging one all-inclusive price. This study examines whether and to what extent partitioned pricing (compared to one all-inclusive price) influences the informational and sacrifice effects of price. We empirically show that partitioned pricing oppositely affects these two distinct roles of price: the informational effect of price (i.e., price as an indicator of quality) increases, while the sacrifice effect (i.e., price as a measure of sacrifice) becomes more negative. In product categories with substantial price–quality inferences, the positive impact of partitioned pricing on the informational effect can overcompensate for its negative impact on the sacrifice effect, making partitioned prices the preferable strategy.

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Notes

  1. Several studies provide empirical evidence that a scenario in which the respondent has to pay for the product and a second scenario in which someone else is paying can decompose the total effect of price in its positive and negative component in a conjoint analysis setting (e.g., Rao and Sattler 2003; Völckner 2008; Theysohn et al. 2011).

  2. The choice share of the most expensive alternative ranges between 23.3 % and 40 %. In other words, when consumers get the wine for free, they did not automatically choose the most expensive alternative, which provides further confidence in the measurement of the two price response components.

  3. To identify potential outliers with regard to the mean total and informational effects of price, we calculated the lower and upper quartiles (LQ and UQ) and the interquartile range (IQR = UQ − LQ). Cases beyond the quartiles by 1.5 IQRs are considered as outliers (e.g., Tukey 1977). Table 1 (lower half) reports the sample sizes with the outliers excluded (n = 318, which equals 88.8 % of the final effective sample).

  4. Because the two conjoint scenarios (total effect and informational effect of price) can be interpreted as a within-subject factor, we also estimated a repeated measures ANOVA with the pricing method as a between-subject factor and the total/informational effect of price as a within-subject factor. We again found a significant increase of the informational effect of price in the partitioned pricing conditions compared to the all-inclusive condition.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Henrik Sattler for his helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript and Sven Theysohn for his help with the data collection. The authors are also grateful for the constructive feedback received during the presentation of this paper at the European Marketing Academy Conference in Nantes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Marketing and Brand Management, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz 1, 50923, Cologne, Germany

    Franziska Völckner & Alexander Rühle

  2. Munich School of Management, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539, Munich, Germany

    Martin Spann

Authors
  1. Franziska Völckner
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  2. Alexander Rühle
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  3. Martin Spann
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Correspondence to Franziska Völckner, Alexander Rühle or Martin Spann.

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Völckner, F., Rühle, A. & Spann, M. To divide or not to divide? The impact of partitioned pricing on the informational and sacrifice effects of price. Mark Lett 23, 719–730 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-012-9174-5

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