Year: 2014
Type: report
Abstract: In a field experiment in Uganda, a free distribution of three health products lowers subsequent demand relative to a sale distribution.This contrasts with work on insecticide-treated bed nets, highlighting the importance of product characteristics in determining pricing policy.We put forward a model to illustrate the potential tension between two of these important factors, learning and anchoring, and then test this model with three products selected specifically for their variation in the scope for learning.We find the rank order of percentage change of shifts in demand matches theoretical predictions, although the differences are not statistically significant, and only two of three pairwise comparisons match when the reductions are specified in percent terms.These results highlight the importance of understanding pricing policy with respect to product, market, and household characteristics.
DOI: 10.3386/w20170
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1519262366