Posts by: Curry W. Hilton

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Play Ball!

By Curry W. Hilton August 11, 2011

Preventing the Resale of Sporting Event Tickets

StubHub, TicketNetwork, and eBay are marketplaces that allow customers to buy and sell unwanted tickets. For example, a season ticket holder uses StubHub as form of consignment to sell a Dallas Mavericks basketball ticket to a consumer that is available and willing to attend the game. The sellers of tickets in the secondary market are capitalizing on possessing elastic demand characteristics. But what about the team owners?

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A Price Segmentation Tale: The Amazon Book Market

By Curry W. Hilton June 19, 2011

As a customer of the Amazon online marketplace and self proclaimed elastic demander of new books in all forms and genres, I find myself intrigued by the pricing segmentation strategies employed. Forcing the consumer to self-identify their willingness to pay using tactical segmentation hedges circumvents the blind online interface between the customer and firm. The consumer’s marginal benefit is indirectly discovered by the time of purchase and method of delivery. Essentially, Amazon has captured a significant array of customers at different pricing points for the same desired good, resulting in revenue outcomes more consistent with quasi-complete price segmentation.

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About The Author

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Curry W. Hilton is a senior pricing analyst at Wiglaf Pricing and economics lecturer at Elon University. His primary research interest focuses on price segmentation, negotiations, and firm strategy.