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This study aims to map and analyze health-care pricing information research. This work highlights current gap in pricing information research in health care and proposes future research avenues to academia and industry professionals.

A bibliometric method was adopted to analyze extant literature on pricing information asymmetry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in health care to triangulate the findings.

Pricing information is crucial for all stakeholders including health-care consumers, providers and regulators. The popular research areas were the rising health-care cost, cost-saving, outcome-based pricing, price based on service supply and demand, insurance and out-of-pocket spending. Cost–quality perceived linkages, cost–demand correlation in health-care service and cost–price interlinked drivers were the dominant themes in extant literature. The study highlighted that pricing information asymmetry pushed patients from weaker sections into a debt trap due to unplanned out-of-pocket health-care expenses. The study suggests areas of research to minimize this pricing information asymmetry.

The emerging themes in health pricing asymmetry will help key stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and take remedial actions in the health-care domain.

This study is a pioneering effort to summarize extant literature published in the health-care information pricing domain and analyze it from a bibliometric perspective. The study also triangulates the finding with primary data from key stakeholders and highlights emerging research areas.

A novel phenomenon in product and service promotions, social coupons facilitate group buying at lower prices, bringing key benefits to customers, merchants and coupon aggregators. This study maps the evolution and innovations in social couponing, identifies knowledge gaps in the domain and sets the future research agenda.

Through a detailed systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis, this study maps the evolution of social coupons over time. The analysis examines social coupon research by studying research outputs by authors, institutes, countries and research themes. It also explores how the social couponing phenomenon has benefited the three key stakeholders: customers, merchants and coupon aggregators.

An innovation in couponing, social coupons are discount coupons that feature group buying, pre-purchase and daily deals. Based on the extensive review of extant literature, the study proposes a conceptual model for the social couponing process. The study also provides inputs for future research on social coupons and delineates their academic and managerial implications.

This study makes a pioneering endeavor to comprehensively map the knowledge structure of social coupons from multiple dimensions.

This study aims to develop a practical and effective approach for market segmentation using customer experience dimensions derived from online reviews.

The research investigates over 6,500 customer evaluations of food establishments on Taiwan’s Yelp platform through the Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) data mining approach. By using the LDA-derived experience dimensions, cluster analysis discloses market segments. Subsequently, sentiment analysis is used to scrutinize the emotional scores of each segment.

Mining online review data helps discern divergent and new customer experience dimensions and sheds light on the divergent preferences among identified customer segments concerning these dimensions. Moreover, the polarity of sentiments expressed by consumers varies across such segments.

Analyzing customer attributes extracted from online reviews for segmentation can enhance comprehension of customers’ needs. Further, using sentiment analysis and attributes of online reviews result in rich profiling of the identified segments, revealing gaps and opportunities for marketers.

This research presents a new approach to segmentation, which surmounts the restrictions of segmentation methods dependent on survey-based information. It contributes to the field and provides a valuable means for conducting customer-focused market segmentation. Furthermore, the suggested methodology is transferable across different sectors and not reliant on particular data sources, creating possibilities in diverse scenarios.

Reference price is a key input in deciding product/service prices by organizations and has a significant influence on consumer purchase decisions. This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of reference pricing literature using bibliometric analysis and offers specific research questions for future research in this domain.

Using a sample of 309 articles published between 1977 and 2021, the study conducts bibliographic coupling, citation analysis, cluster analysis, content analysis, keyword analysis and a three-field plot to map the intellectual structure of reference price.

The content analysis gave seven research clusters: (1) modeling reference price, (2) consumer perceptions of price (un)fairness, (3) price framing, (4) comparative price-based promotion, (5) reference price formulation, (6) pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing and (7) range theory and price perceptions. The study also delineates reference price literature across several parameters like authorship, highest cited paper, most popular journal, institutions, region-wise publication trend and author-networks. The emerging research themes for future scholars working in this domain have also been highlighted.

This is the first comprehensive study to explore reference price from a bibliometric lens. The study highlights and discusses the recent themes on reference price, from both academic and managerial perspectives.

Pricing, Marketing Management, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Management.

The case can be used for a Pricing Course and Strategic Marketing, Marketing Management and Strategic Management courses delivered to post-graduate management programme (Master’s level) students and/or for Management Development Programme’s.

Alliance Intercontinental Sourcing Company LLP (ALLISCO) manufactured Steel Blanks for clutch plates used in two- and three-wheeler automobiles. Steel Blank plates further underwent a processing phase which included coating with leather cover to form the finished clutch plate. The primary raw material used by ALLISCO for its manufacturing process was sheet metal. The processing of the principal raw material resulted in the production of three joint products. The first joint product was “Steel Blank”, the main product; the second joint product was “Inner Circle”, which may be classified as a by-product; the third joint product was the left-over waste material and could be categorized as sheet scrap. The approximate increase in procurement cost of 8 per cent had considerably impacted the firm’s profit margins. The dilemma that Rishabh Singla, Managing Partner, ALLISCO, now faced was how the increased differential could be distributed systematically among the three joint products. The challenge for ALLISCO was to preserve the percentage of gross profit margins by altering its existing pricing strategy.

Understand the concept of multiple joint products; learn about choosing appropriate pricing strategies to price multiple joint products; comprehend how value-based pricing can extract untapped profits; and understand the importance of retaining gross profit margins (%).

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.

Pricing, digital marketing, marketing management and strategic marketing.

The case can be used for pricing or digital marketing courses as well as marketing management courses to MBA students and/or for management development programmes.

Goldfinch Mobile Solutions, a Hong-Kong based value added services (VAS) and gaming platform provider, had an exclusive tie up with Bharti Airtel in India for providing value added voice applications on an interactive voice response system (IVRS) platform. The Goldfinch flagship service is “Guru Ki Bani” which may be subscribed to by dialing the short code 58282. This “58282” service has a repository of all Sikh religion daily prayers, religious songs, teachings, stories from Guru's life and similar information that is derived from the Sikh Holy book Guru Granth Sahib Ji. As per mutual agreement between Goldfinch Mobile Solutions and Bharti Airtel, the telecom operator had the responsibility to promote Goldfinch's Guru Ki Bani service amongst its subscriber base through its below the line (BTL) promotional channels such as short messaging service (SMS), outbound calls, cell information, notification SMS after call and above the line (ATL) activities such as posters, leaflets, print, promoters, regional TV, outdoors, etc. The revenue sharing arrangement between Airtel and Golfinch was in the ratio of 75 percent and 25 percent. However, with recent changes in the policies of Telephone Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), promotional marketing used by telecom operators has been constrained. Declining customer share, decreasing profits (after Bharti Airtel halted promotions) and increasing organization cost per customer have made MD and CEO Mr Newton Bubber think of various options including low-cost marketing initiatives besides digital marketing to promote Guru Ki Bani services. Value communication to its huge potential customer base, i.e. 184.19 million Bharti Airtel subscribers was another challenge facing Mr Newton and his marketing team at Goldfinch.

The case enables students to learn the concepts and application of value creation, effective value communication, price waterfall analysis, importance of costing parameters in pricing decisions, low-cost marketing strategies and digital marketing.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.

Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this study analyzes the impact of gamified and personalized coupons on the intention to redeem digital coupons in the presence of consumer engagement and technology anxiety.

A between-subjects factorial experimental design was used to examine the influence of three personalizations (no personalization, personalization and hyper-personalization) and two gamification levels (game and no game) on digital coupon redemption intention and consumer engagement.

The results found a significant interaction between the types of personalization and gamification, with personalized coupons having a greater impact on the intention to redeem digital coupons than hyper-personalized and non-personalized coupons. Consumer engagement was found to mediate the relationship between types of coupons and intention to redeem digital coupons. However, technology anxiety was not found to be significant as a moderator.

This study makes an important contribution in its application of SDT to examine the interaction impact of types of coupons and gamification conditions in the context of digital coupon redemption. This unique approach underscores the novelty of the research and its potential to provide valuable insights for the coupon industry.

This study aims to analyze the available literature on the use of digital marketing in a business-to-business (B2B) context. It identifies gaps in the current research knowledge and proposes a research agenda for scholars and practitioners.

A systematic literature review has been conducted on B2B digital marketing. The various themes have been identified on the basis of the comprehensive analysis of extant literature. Also, semi-structured interviews with B2B marketing experts were also conducted to further refine the emerged digital marketing themes.

Although some B2B firms use digital marketing, most are unable to leverage its full benefits because of the dearth of comprehensive research on the subject. This review provides an insight into the emerging themes by developing a collaborative conceptual framework. The review highlights that few areas such as digital marketing communication and sales management have witnessed steady development while decision support systems, critical success factors, electronic marketing orientation (EMO), etc., were lesser explored. Furthermore, it identifies research gaps and highlights the emerging research themes for future researchers.

The collaborative framework will help organizations to align their digital marketing activities as per the changing market dynamics such as the focus on building social media capability, EMO and value co-creation.

Research on the use of digital marketing by B2B firms is still at the embryonic stage. This study is a pioneering effort to review the use of digital marketing in B2B organizations and identify research priorities for scholars and practitioners.

The increased digital interactions in the B2B industry have enhanced the importance of customer engagement as a measure of firm performance. This study aims to map and analyze temporal and spatial journeys for customer engagement in B2B markets from a bibliometric perspective.

The extant literature on customer engagement research in the B2B context was analyzed using bibliometric analysis. The citation analysis, keyword analysis, cluster analysis, three-field plot and bibliographic coupling were used to map the intellectual structure of customer engagement in B2B markets.

The research on customer engagement in the B2B context was studied more in western countries. The analysis suggests that customer engagement in B2B markets will take centre stage in the coming times as digital channels make it easier to track critical metrics besides other key factors. Issues like digital transformation, the use of artificial intelligence for virtual engagement, personalization, innovation and salesforce management by leveraging technology would be critical for improved B2B customer engagement.

The study provides a comprehensive reference to scholars working in this domain.

The study makes a pioneering effort to comprehensively analyze the vast corpus of literature on customer engagement in B2B markets for business insights.

The discount image associated with odd-ending prices has led to its extensive use by retailers. The purpose of this study is to assess the impacts and applications of nine-ending vs round-ending prices on the purchase of green and non-green products at different price levels and under different purchase motivations.

Three experiments are conducted. The first experiment is a 2 (price ending: nine-ending vs round-ending) × 2 (product appeal: green vs non-green) between-subjects study; the second experiment is a 2 (price ending: nine-ending vs round-ending) × 2 (price level: low price vs high price) × 2 (product appeal: green vs non-green) between-subjects study; and the third experiment examined buyers’ preferences of price endings regarding the purchase of green products having either utility (utilitarian) or pleasure (hedonic) motivation.

This research highlights that consumers prefer zero-ending prices for green products and pleasure motivation products, but they prefer odd endings for low-priced and utilitarian products. These results support the increased reception of round-ending prices. Accordingly, this study contributes to the literature by providing a boundary condition for odd-ending prices. Specifically, the study finds that the effect of nine-ending prices becomes weaker as the price of the product increases.

The findings of this study have practical implications for managers, as the results indicate that pricing green products and high-quality perception products using round digits and pricing low-priced and utility perception products using odd digits will increase consumers’ purchase intentions. Moreover, pricing the products using round-ending prices will reduce the perception of low quality and deter brand loyalty emanating from a low-priced/discount image of a product.

This research contributes to theoretical and practical aspects of behavioural pricing literature. This research uncovers the buyers’ distinct preferences for zero-ending prices and odd-ending prices when purchasing different products based on different motivations and varied price levels. This is the first research of its kind to explore and compare the impact of psychological pricing on green products. The study also resolves a contradiction in past literature regarding the use of nine-ending prices by providing boundary conditions.