'Dear Customer, We Must Increase Our Prices ...' How Service Firms Utilize Types of Price Increase Communications

摘要

Because price increases often lead to customer switching, managing and implementing them is a key challenge for firms. Firms search for tactics to raise prices for their customers while securing profit margins and also maintain their customer base. Further, many industries are required to explicitly announce increased prices by sending customers notification letters. This ascends the question how firms respond to this requirement and try to prevent the undesirable effects on their customer base such as switching. Therefore, it seems plausible that these firms conceptualize their price increase letters according to their assumptions what factors might impact customers more positively regarding the price increase and finally prevent negative responses such as complaints toward the firm, negative word-of-mouth and switching. We thus aim to investigate the following research questions: 1. How do service firms communicate price increases in obligatory notifications?