Pricing research in hospitality and tourism and marketing literature: a systematic review and research agenda

Abstract

Purpose

This study systematically reviewed pricing research published in leading marketing and hospitality and tourism (H&T) journals between 2010 and 2019. It attempts to concretize the understanding of the evolving patterns of pricing research in both fields and suggests an agenda for future research in H&T.

Design/methodology/approach

This study performed keyword co-occurrence analyses and co-citation analyses on the bibliographic data of 575 articles from marketing and H&T journals. Content analysis was applied to investigate the emerged topics in H&T.

Findings

The marketing discipline showed a persistent focus on research themes including price promotion, reference price, price fairness and pricing strategy. The H&T domain experienced a significant content enrichment of preexistent research topics. H&T scholars showed a growing interest in studying pricing for sharing economy accommodations and the interplay between pricing and electronic word-of-mouth. While marketing research applied theories from multiple disciplines as the theoretical foundations, H&T studies adopted the hedonic pricing model as an overarching theory.

Practical implications

Future pricing research in H&T may incorporate theories from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and anthropology to broaden the scope of the study. Besides, innovative study designs and complex data analysis techniques should be encouraged. Topicwise, H&T scholars can dive deeper into price promotion and distribution channel price management.

Originality/value

This is the first study consolidating the pricing literature in H&T and marketing. It also suggests the potential research directions for researchers.

Citation

Han, W. and Bai, B. (2022), "Pricing research in hospitality and tourism and marketing literature: a systematic review and research agenda", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 1717-1738. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-08-2021-0963