Whether and to What Extent Consumers Demand Fair Pricing Behavior for Its Own Sake

This article contributes to scholarly understanding of the significance of procedural fairness in pricing contexts. It has been widely recognized that price fairness judgments concern both the outcome (fair price) and the procedure leading to the outcome (fair pricing). However, extant research has traditionally viewed procedural fairness as a means to outcome fairness. According to this instrumental view, procedural fairness is a component or antecedent of outcome fairness, but has no direct effects on consumers’ responses to prices. Building on the relational perspective on fairness, we develop and test a model of price procedural fairness as an end in itself. In three lab studies, we show that (1) when information regarding outcome (an unfavorable price difference) and procedure (the pricing practice underlying the price difference) is available simultaneously and unambiguously, procedural fairness has direct and stronger effects than outcome fairness on consumers’ responses and (2) procedural fairness mediates the effects of pricing practices on these responses. In all three studies, adding procedural fairness as a direct predictor of consumers’ responses increases the explanatory power of a model of price fairness significantly. Our model can explain peculiar real-world cases in which consumers reacted very strongly over relatively small price differences. The research findings point to the significance of the non-instrumental aspect of consumer’s demand for ethical (fair pricing) behavior and the need for companies to assess the fairness of their pricing practices from the consumer perspective.