The FairPay Zone

FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships -- Richard Reisman's blog (now a book) on win-win ways to reinvent business, resolve the revenue crisis for digital, and create more customer/vendor lifetime value for all. Seeking value-based, customer-first relationships. A one to one "invisible handshake" that brings commerce back to human values. A simple "risk-free subscription" that is far more win-win and efficient than flat-rate, all you can eat, for far more subscribers.

Selected Items

(See Overview, then these items)

Book
FairPay: Adaptively Win-Win Customer Relationships,
Reisman's 2016 book was praised as “an innovative and visionary methodology,” "groundbreaking," a "radically new perspective," "promises to transform business."
A nice summary of the book, and the concept, is in the Foreword by Adrian Payne.

Techonomy (now Worth)
Short, readable overview of the core ideas (11/15/18)
Information Wants to be Free; Consumers May Want to Pay

Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management
A Novel Revenue Architecture to Monetize Digital Offerings.

Practice Paper on FairPay (2/26/18) - excellent introduction
Richard Reisman, Marco Bertini (ESADE Business School)

A brief recap was published in ESADE Knowledge (3/19/18) as
Three Building Blocks to Monetize a Digital Business

...and by the Subscribed Institute's Subscribed.com

Australasian Marketing Journal
Invited paper on FairPay and other models (accepted 6/21/19)
"AMJ Best Paper of 2019"

"ANZMAC AMJ Industry Relevance Award"
Richard Reisman, Adrian Payne (University of New South Wales), Pennie Frow (University of Sydney)
Pricing in Consumer Digital Markets: A Dynamic Framework

Harvard Business Review

When Selling Digital Content,
Let the Customer Set the Price.
Richard Reisman, Marco Bertini (ESADE B-School) (11/18/13)
(Very brief - the above journal paper expands on this)

Inc. Magazine

Covid-19 and the Future of the Passion Economy (4/29/20)

The Disruptive Power of the Ends Game (Part 1 of 2) 9/8/20

The Disruptive Power of the Ends Game, Part 2: Invite the Customer to Help. 9/11/20

...Additional research collaborations on FairPay are described below.

FairPayZone Blog Posts
This FairPayZone blog explores FairPay at various levels and business contexts.

FairPay and Pricing Strategy in General -- Finding Value!

Resource Guide to Pricing -- Finding Fair Value Exchange

Business Use Cases: Journalism, TV/Video, Music, Apps, Non-Profits, ...

Process Flow as a Repeated Game

Adaptively Seeking Win-Win Customer Relationships -- A New Economics of FairPay

Behavioral Economics Underpinnings -- Profiting from The Human Side of Consumers

FairPay in the Wild -- Trials

Price Discovery for a New App? – A Trial of the FairPay Strategy Begins

SPECIAL RELEVANCE TO CURRENT ISSUES IN SOCIAL MEDIA:

What others have written about FairPay

Anne Janzer, Author, Subscription Marketing: Disrupting Subscription Pricing: FairPay

OpenView Labs, by Steven Forth, Consultant: Three Pricing Predictions For 2018 (And How To Use Them ToYour Advantage)

Adrian Payne, Professor of Marketing, University of New South Wales Business School and Visiting Professor, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, and author of fourteen books, including the first text to be published on Relationship Marketing:Foreword to my book, FairPay

John Blossom, Consultant: Pay as You Exit: FairPay Explores New Content Pricing Discovery Regimes

Video and Slide Introduction
Video and slides of Reisman presentations

Sample FairPay Offer
This sample offer letter to consumers shows how a newspaper might frame FairPay as a privileged benefit to regular patrons – to enable them to participate in a win-win pricing process and personalize their value propositions – as an alternative to a standard freemium "soft paywall."

Original Introduction to FairPay
Still the most complete presentation, not much the worse for age (6/20/10)
FairPay: The Future of a Radical Pricing Process

NMIMS Management Review
FairPay Relationship Pricing: An Adaptive, Value-Based Strategy for Consumer Markets
Richard Reisman, 10/4/17

Naples Forum on Service
Co-Pricing: Co-Creating Customer Value Through Dynamic Value Propositions
Pennie Frow, Richard Reisman, and Adrian Payne, 6/11/15

MediaPost: The Future of Media
Beyond the Ad Model - A New Economics for Media
Richard Reisman, 9/24/12

Technical notes on exemplary algorithm details

Free Support

Free consultation to those interested in evaluating and applying FairPay is offered by Richard Reisman. (fairpay [at] teleshuttle [dot] com)

Help assembling teams of academic collaborators who can assist in the design and evaluation of trials is also offered.

Academic Collaborations

Scholars who have contributed to the development of FairPay and have interest in assisting with research trials include:

Marco Bertini, co-author of the HBR Blog post and a more extensive paper on FairPay pending publication, is Chair of the marketing department at ESADE in Barcelona, Spain. He is considered a leading expert in the area of pricing strategy, is a prolific author in HBR and other leading business and academic journals, and has been working for some time on many of the strategies that FairPay builds on. (Via Dan Ariely and Ayelet Gneezy.)
Adrian Payne, Professor of Marketing, University of New South Wales Business School and Pennie Frow, Professor and Program Director, Master of Marketing at University of Sydney Business School. They have collaborated with Reisman on a presentation and a paper on FairPay in development, and are co-authors of Strategic Customer Management: Integrating Relationship Marketing and CRM,the first textbook on combining those methods, as well as authors of many other influential books and papers in leading publications.
Heather Caruso, Director, Center for Decision Research, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago (via Richard Thaler.)

Reisman's Broader Work and Interests

Smartly Intertwingled (Blog)
(Formerly: Reisman on User-Centered Media)
"Everything is deeply intertwingled," was a guiding insight that led to the Web. People can be smarter about dealing with that - in media services, social media, and society and life more broadly. Technology can augment that.

Recent posts are related to innovative work on social media and Internet platforms, relating to reversing current negative impacts, better business models, privacy, advertising, regulation/antitrust, architectures, and digital democracy.

New York Angels
Reisman is a member (and on the Education Committee) for this member-led organization committed to finding, funding and mentoring great young companies from pitches through a successful exits. New York Angels consists over 130 active members with a wealth of experience across industry sectors, and is one of the top 10 angel groups in the world.

---
Richard Reisman is a practitioner in online media and e-commerce, and the technologies that drive that, and has been involved in pricing of digital offerings since the 1970s.
Biography.
(Disclosures, and information on US patent filings now in public domain)

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"Anyone responsible for monetizing digital content in consumer markets should understand this radically new perspective on pricing and how to maximize lifetime customer value."

- Shelly Palmer, Business Advisor, Author, Commentator

"...an innovative and visionary methodology …what disruption could look like..."

- Lucila Pagnoni, News Corp Australia

"...groundbreaking..."

- Professor Pennie Frow, University of Sydney Business School

"...compelling ...promises to transform business..."

- Professor Adrian Payne, University of New South Wales Business School

"Highly recommended for digital business entrepreneurs, as well as established firms..."

- Jim Spohrer, IBM and ISSIP.org

Foreword by Adrian Payne

How FairPay Works
...over a relationship, as a repeated game
...through a deceptively simple balancing dynamic:

1. Set the rules (Seller). As usual, the seller sets the ground-rules of the game, but in this repeated game, the rules favor fairness, transparency, and cooperation on both sides. The seller decides to whom to make a FairPay offer, on what terms and conditions. FairPay offers are a privilege that can be granted or withheld.

2. Set the price (Buyer). Reversing traditional practice, the buyer is granted the power to set the price to whatever value-based price the buyer considers fair -- after the sale, when the real value is experienced and known.

3. Repeat the game? (Seller). This seller power is what makes FairPay work, balancing the power of the buyer to set the price. The seller tracks the price, and determines, in the context of the overall history, whether it seems fair enough to the seller to continue the FairPay game for another round.

The buyer knows this is a repeated game, and must consider the consequences when exercising his price-setting power. That motivates the buyer to price reasonably fairly. This builds a relationship based on fair value exchange, that adapts and evolves over time. The seller manages "dialogs about value" that frame the value that was delivered, and a suggested price for that -- and nudge the buyer to be generous by offering more value for more generosity.

This repeated game structure gives buyers a strong incentive to price fairly – and enables sellers to limit their future exposure to those who do not.

More broadly, it shifts the entire focus of customer relationships from short-term transaction price to long-term relationship value.

...See Overview for more

Consumers -- Pay only what seems fair to you:

Pay what you think fair for products or services – after you try them
Make every purchase on a trial basis – so you can always be sure to get your personal fair value for your money
Agree to set your price fairly – in your judgment – and explain why you think it is fair
Keep that privilege as long as you can convince the seller that you are being fair

Businesses -- Get the most revenue from the most customers by continuously learning what each one values:

Engage in real dialog with each of your customers and listen to their perceptions of the value they get from your products/services
Make a trial offer to every potential customer who sees potential value
Suggest a price after use that you think is fair for that particular customer, considering all relevant factors
Offer incentives, such as premium tiers and perks, to entice fairness, even generosity
Let your customers self-select into segments (based on usage, value perception, willingness and ability to pay, ...)
Limit your risk from those trial offers by tracking the results (fairness) for each buyer, and limiting future offers if you judge that buyer to not pay fairly
Retain set-price plans for those who refuse to play the game fairly
Learn how much freedom (FairPay credit) to extend (or what restrictions to enforce) to get satisfactory results from each customer segment
Continue to make every offer a trial...
...as long as each buyer continues paying fairly--in your judgment

Delight your customers: give them what they really want, at a price they really think fair.
Shift the conversation from price to value, and from transactions to relationships.
Empower them to engage with you and tell you what they value.
Make commerce a repeated game that drives value creation to build a profitable relationship with high Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Sample FairPay Offer

...This sample offer letter to consumers shows how a newspaper might frame FairPay as a privileged benefit to regular patrons – to enable them to participate in a win-win pricing process and personalize their value propositions – as an alternative to a standard freemium "soft paywall."

FairPay Application/Market Sectors
...Overview of major market sectors in which the FairPay revenue model is readily applicable

Why would anyone pay if they do not have to? ...and other FAQs
...The answer is simple: Buyers who do not pay will not get further offers.

Resource Guide to Pricing
...Annotated links and references on Pricing, Pay What You Want, and other related background