Advancement Through Research
The economic importance of electronic services is constantly increasing. An often-neglected issue in this context is the quest for appropriate methods and instruments for determining the price of these e-services, especially for SMEs. This paper presents the development of a possible pricing concept that fulfils both the specific needs of SMEs and the challenges of e-service pricing. The work builds on a preliminary study which, through a qualitative and quantitative empirical survey, provided initial insights into the relevance of e-services, their applied pricing strategies and requirements for an ideal pricing tool from the perspective of established companies (Hatzl et al. 2018). The four phases of the classical Delphi method (acc. to Häder 2014) were used as a template, an overarching umbrella, for the development of a process model for e-service pricing. In phase 1 experts provided ideas of tools which might be useful for pricing combining with an extensive literature research. At the same time, a survey and interviews were conducted to define the needs of SMEs. In phase 3 findings were combined and experts selected suitable pricing tools. This leads to phase 4 were a process model for e-service pricing was defined in a series of expert workshops, followed by the development of a minimal viable product (MVP).
Pricing, e-services, SMEs, Value Assessment
