Purchasing professionals and the flat-rate bias: Effects of price premiums, past usage, and relational ties on price plan choice
通过四项实验发现，经验丰富的采购专业人士在选择商业服务价格计划时倾向于固定费率，即使它比按使用付费更贵；这种偏差在固定费率更贵时减弱，但在过去使用量高和买卖关系强时增强。
Purchasing professionals arguably choose a price plan that leads to the lowest costs—all else being equal—for their companies when buying services. However, evidence suggests that they prefer flat rates, even where these are more expensive than pay-per-use options. A series of four experiments showed that experienced purchasing professionals tend to exhibit a flat-rate bias in their price plan choices across different business services. The experiments also investigated moderators that intensify or attenuate this bias, which decreased when the flat-rate option was the more expensive alternative but increased with past usage, with upper bound extremes. We also found directional support that the flat-rate bias increases when the buyer-seller relationship is stronger. The experiments also revealed how insurance, convenience, taximeter, overestimation, distrust, and administration effects are related to preferences for flat rates. Beyond their contribution to the pricing literature, these results provide actionable insights for marketing managers and purchasing professionals.