Four Key Qualities of Any “Pay As You Wish” Pricing Strategy

Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang

When English alternative rock band Radiohead made a decision in 2007 to leave pricing to their fans after years of frustration with traditional distribution through their old record label EMI, the move began an experiment: Rather than price their music the conventional way, they let their fans pay whatever they wanted to download their latest 10-song album, In Rainbows. At the checkout page of the inrainbows.com website, visitors came to an empty price box. When they clicked on the box, a message came up that said, “It’s up to you.” On the next page, another message came up that said, “No, really, it’s up to you.”

Typically, a seller turns to “pay as ...

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