Pricing and monetization · Field experiment randomizing/observing negotiation opportunities and prices in retail electricity.
Price Discrimination by Negotiation: a Field Experiment in Retail Electricity
Ying Fan, John D. List, Liyan Shi (2023). Price Discrimination by Negotiation: a Field Experiment in Retail Electricity. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac020.
Plain-English take
Negotiation generated price discrimination; the experiment identifies negotiated prices and their determinants. For your marketing: Use the study to frame a pricing or packaging hypothesis and identify outcomes to measure; estimate effects with your own customer mix and willingness-to-pay evidence.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Moderate evidence for a specific setting
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Field experiment randomizing/observing negotiation opportunities and prices in retail electricity.
Retail electricity customers in a posted-price-plus-negotiation market.
Judged from the publisher-described design and comparison; inspect the paper for complete analysis.
Publisher page and abstract were retrieved directly; full text was not assumed open.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the retrieved publisher record.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How does negotiation create price discrimination when firms also post prices?
Design
Field experiment randomizing/observing negotiation opportunities and prices in retail electricity.
Sample and setting
Retail electricity customers in a posted-price-plus-negotiation market.
Reported result
What the study found
Negotiation generated price discrimination; the experiment identifies negotiated prices and their determinants.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Retail electricity and institutional negotiation setting may not transfer to self-serve SaaS; bargaining outcomes depend on customer and seller participation.
Possible founder application
Use the study to frame a pricing or packaging hypothesis and identify outcomes to measure; estimate effects with your own customer mix and willingness-to-pay evidence.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract/metadata retrieved; full text may require access.
Oxford publisher page states the field-experiment design and that it reveals negotiated prices and determinants. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; this profile uses the publisher abstract/metadata and does not claim independent review of unavailable full text.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.