Should consumers request cost transparency?

The purpose of this paper is to propose that consumer choice be guided by price fairness judgements to increase consumer satisfaction and subsequently enhance market efficiency. Consumers en masse lack the information to judge price fairness, thereby causing their ability to influence the economy to be overlooked.

This is an argumentative and conceptual work that aims to initiate a debate on this important yet unexplored issue. The arguments presented in the paper are based on economic and technological considerations.

The measure for enabling a consumer price fairness judgement is unit cost information – the cost incurred by a firm to produce a product and/or service. The benefits and challenges stemming from the availability of unit cost information (i.e. cost transparency) to consumers and companies are presented and the likely impact of cost transparency on addressing information asymmetries between buyers and sellers are discussed.

Although a significant body of knowledge exists on issues such as price transparency and how it is driven and enabled by the growth of the Internet, there is little or no evidence of research yet on issues related to cost transparency. The authors believe this work would create a new line of research for scholarly community leading to an impact on practice.