Role of customer attributes on absolute price thresholds

Purpose This paper aims to examine how customer heterogeneity influences absolute price thresholds in a service industry. Design/methodology/approach Customer purchase behavior is studied in the context of a firm’s and competitor’s price changes. Customer purchase behavior is further examined in the context of specific customer attributes such as loyalty, motivation, online purchase channel, gender and frequency of purchase. The study uses a longitudinal data set spanning over 44 months and tracks over 13,000 of a firm’s customers, totaling over 200,000 transactions from a parking services provider. Findings Results show that absolute price thresholds affect purchasing decisions. Customers are willing to pay a range of prices for a considered purchase, and when a price is within customers’ acceptable price range, it does not induce a change in their purchase behavior. However, specific identifiable customer attributes influence the propensity to continue buying and influence the acceptable price range. Practical implications Knowledge from this study can be applied to developing a deeper understanding of customers and their price thresholds to improve customer retention and firm performance after a price change. Originality/value For a better understanding of the consumer choice process, it is essential to understand what factors affect price thresholds. Additionally, very few studies are using transaction-level data to empirically validate concepts from behavioral price research in the service industry, and none that do it at an individual customer level over three years.

Serostatus Testing & Dengue Vaccine Cost-Benefit Thresholds

The World Health Organisation currently recommends pre-screening for past infection prior to administration of the only licensed dengue vaccine, CYD-TDV. Using a bounding analysis, we show that despite additional testing costs, this approach can improve the economic viability of CYD-TDV: effective testing reduces unnecessary vaccination costs while increasing the health benefit for vaccine recipients. When testing is cheap enough, those trends outweigh additional screening costs and make test-then-vaccinate strategies net-beneficial in many settings.We derived these results using a general approach for determining price thresholds for testing and vaccination, as well as indicating optimal start and end ages of routine test-then-vaccinate programs. This approach only requires age-specific seroprevalence and a cost estimate for second infections. We demonstrate this approach across settings commonly used to evaluate CYD-TDV economics, and highlight implications of our simple model for more detailed studies. We found trends showing test-then-vaccinate strategies are generally more beneficial starting at younger ages, and that in some settings multiple years of testing can be more beneficial than only testing once, despite increased investment in testing.

Colombia – Measures Relating to the Importation of Textiles, Apparel and Footwear (Colombia–Textiles), DS461

This dispute concerned the imposition by Colombia of a ‘compound tariff’ on the importation of certain textiles, apparel, and footwear classified under Chapters 61 through 64 of Colombia's Customs Tariff. The compound tariff was composed of an ad valorem levy, expressed as a percentage of the customs value of goods, and a specific levy, expressed in units of currency per unit of measurement. The ad valorem component of the compound tariff was 10% for all products regardless of their value; the specific component depended on price thresholds for certain textiles, apparel, and footwear, imposing a higher levy on products imported below the price threshold set out in the corresponding Chapter of Colombia's Customs Tariff.

An Empirical Study Of Price Thresholds And Price Sensitivity

Consumer price sensitivity is studied in the context of supermarket grocery shopping using a survey of supermarket shoppers. It is shown that price sensitivity depends both on product features and consumer characteristics. Price laws such as Webers law and the Weber-Fechner law are empirically investigated. Shopper profiles are identified on the basis of price sensitivity by discriminant analysis of variables representing consumer demographics, shopping behavior, and price awareness.