The impact of household level heterogeneity in reference price effects on optimal retailer pricing policies

The field of marketing has witnessed substantial improvement in modeling household level heterogeneity. However, relatively little has been written about how modeling household heterogeneity translates into better marketing decisions. In this paper, we study the impact of household level heterogeneity in reference price effects on a retailer's pricing policy. Reference prices are certain anchors or standards that households use to compare the observed purchase price of a product against. If the observed price is greater than the reference price it is perceived as a “loss” and if it is smaller than the reference price it is perceived as a “gain”. In order to study the impact of heterogeneity in reference price effects on retail pricing, we test a nested logit model under two alternative reference price (memory and stimulus based) and heterogeneity (finite mixture and hierarchical Bayes) specifications. In the empirical analysis, we find that households are quite heterogeneous in terms of their gain and loss effects. For some households a gain has higher impact than a corresponding loss, while the opposite is true for others. Using individual level estimates we then develop a normative pricing policy for a retailer maximizing category profit. Our results indicate that the optimal pricing policy derived from the heterogeneous case is qualitatively different, and more profitable, than the case when heterogeneity is ignored. We show that for an important marketing problem pertaining to a retailer, the optimal pricing decisions for various brands in a category are inextricably related to household heterogeneity in reference effects and brand preference.

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► The heterogeneity in households’ reference price impacts optimal retail pricing policy.
► Heterogeneity estimated using nested logit model using alternative reference price formulations.
► Based on estimates, normative pricing policies are developed.
► It is optimal for a retailer to promote all brands if gain-seeking segment is a majority.
► If the households are mainly loss-averse, a constant pricing policy is optimal.
► Results validated across two product categories.