Cognitive time as a service price determinant: Hidden dynamics and price collapse

Abstract

A novel service price equation is advanced to explain how prices in the services market depend on service workers’ cognitive time in relation to the actual clock time (physical time) that is contracted for a service. Cognitive time affects service revenues, costs, the targeted service profit, and budgeted service time. The equation shows how the cognitive time of service workers produces a hidden price-lever effect, in which the service price behavior becomes non-linear. A minor difference between the cognitive time and the physical time of a given service generates a significant change in the price level required to realize a targeted service profit. If the workload of a service worker is increased to a certain level, there is a potential service price collapse, implying that the service provider cannot reach the budgeted profit. This collapse condition further advances the emerging literature on behavioral pricing of services.