We report on a natural field experiment on quantity discounts involving more than 14 million consumers. Implementing price reductions ranging from 9-70% for large purchases, we found remarkably little impact on revenue, either positively or negatively. There was virtually no increase in the quantity of customers making a purchase; all the observed changes occurred for customers who already were...

Previous papers find no relationship between interest rates and the discounts of US closed-end funds before 1985. This is taken as evidence against management fees being a cause of discounts because a negative relationship is expected: if interest rates rise, you would expect to see discounts fall as the present value of future fees is reduced. But from 1985 forward, there has been a strong pos...

This paper extends the standard model of bundling to allow products to be substitutes and for products to be supplied by separate sellers. Whether integrated or separate, …rms have an incentive to introduce bundling discounts when demand for the bundle is elastic relative to demand for stand-alone products. Separate …rms often have a unilateral incentive to o¤er inter-…rm bundle discounts, alth...

We present a framework for automatically suggesting highprofit bundle discounts based on historical customer purchase data. We develop several search algorithms that identify profit-maximizing prices and bundle discounts. We introduce a richer probabilistic valuation model than prior work by capturing complementarity, substitutability, and covariance, and we provide a hybrid search technique fo...

Loyalty discounts are agreements to sell at a lower price to buyers who buy all or most of their purchases from the seller. This article proves that loyalty discounts can create anticompetitive effects, not only because they can impair rival efficiency, but also because loyalty discounts can perversely discourage discounting even when they have no effect on rival efficiency. The essential reaso...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In a recent article in this journal, Scott (2014) documented the social welfare rationale for offering discounts to the economically disadvantaged. However, he acknowledged the conventional view is that discounts equate to reduced revenue and more tax support which makes them difficult to sustain in many communities. The goal of this paper is to offer an alternative justifica...

While most market-oriented pricing schemes include offers of quantity discounts, their size is generally decided on arbitrarily. This article discusses the various possible marketing objectives of quantity discounts and argues that valid methods for calculating appropriate schedules should be linked to these objectives. Using a specific case study, the practical application of this approach is ...