WORKING 

 PAPERS

QUANTITY DISCOUNTS FROM RISK AVERSE SELLERS

Patrick J. DeGraba

WORKING PAPER NO. 276

APRIL 2005

___________________________________________________________________________

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______________________________________________________________________________

BUREAU OF ECONOMICS

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, DC 20580
1

Quantity Discounts from Risk Averse Sellers 

Patrick J. DeGraba* 

April, 2005 

It is widely believed that larger customers in a market can secure lower prices 

than smaller customers. This paper presents conditions under which risk averse sellers, 

who can distinguish larger customers from smaller customers, but who cannot observe 

customers’ valuations, have an incentive to offer lower prices to larger customers. The 

intuition is that a single customer that demands a specific quantity represents a riskier 

profit source than multiple customers with independent valuations whose demands sum to 

that same quantity. Sellers respond to the riskier profit source by offering a lower price 

to reduce some of the risk. 

The paper suggests the existence of a “pure customer size effect” that would 

always create an incentive for sellers to offer larger customers lower prices. It also 

suggests two other effects, one due to a change in the size of the market and the other 

based on the mix of large and small customers. These effects may either reinforce or 

counteract the pure customer size effect, depending on the nature of the seller’s utility 

function. 

*Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC 20580, pdegraba@ftc.gov. The opinions 

expressed in the paper are not necessarily those of the Federal Trade Commission nor any 

individual Commissioner. I thank David Balan, Daniel O’Brien, and David Schmidt and 

two anonymous FTC reviewers for helpful comments. 
2

1. Introduction 

Over the last two decades, individual hospitals have joined buying arrangements 

called group purchasing organizations (GPOs), which consolidate the purchasing of 

member hospitals, effectively turning multiple smaller buyers into larger buyers for the 

purpose of securing lower prices from vendors. A number of studies have indicated that 

such organizations have been successful in securing substantial price reductions relative 

to the prices that could be obtained by individual hospitals.1

 

The case of GPOs is particularly interesting because consolidation under GPOs 

seems to provide none of the cost savings that might explain the lower prices. A GPO 

will typically negotiate a set of rates under which member hospitals can purchase from 

vendors. However, once such rates are set, each hospital arranges for its own delivery 

schedule and quantities. Thus, many of the economies from coordinated production 

and/or delivery that might explain lower prices are not present. In addition hospitals are 

not bound to purchase specific quantities from a given vendor, which seems to rule out 

quantity commitments that allow for investments of the efficient levels of customer 

specific assets.2 It also seems unlikely economies of scale can explain the results since 

many products are commodity products sold by firms of different size. 

The GPO experience seems to be an example of a widely held belief that larger 

customers command lower prices than smaller customers. This is interesting because it is 

difficult to show why, in the absence of some form of cost savings, an expected profit 

maximizing seller would offer lower prices to larger customers. For example, the expected 

profit maximizing price for one buyer buying 5 units equals the optimal price for five 

independent buyers each buying one unit if all buyers’ valuation distributions are the same. 

This paper offers the simple explanation that if an expected utility maximizing 

seller exhibits risk aversion, then she offers a large customer purchasing a given quantity 

a lower per unit price than the price she offers a group of smaller identically sized 

customers purchasing that same quantity. The intuition behind this result is that in a 

market in which sellers cannot observe buyers’ valuations, a customer that is purchasing 

5 units is a riskier source of profits than 5 customers with independent valuations each 

 

1

 See Scanlon (2002). 
3

purchasing 1 unit. Expected utility maximization suggests that in response to this higher 

risk, a seller offers the larger customer a lower price. This lower price reduces the 

expected profit from the large customer, but increases the probability of making the sale. 

I call this the pure customer size effect. 

 I identify two other effects. The first is a size of the market effect. I show that an 

increase in the size of customers that also increases the size of the market can lead to an 

increase, a decrease or no change at all in the price that customers face. The effect 

depends on the relative risk aversion of the seller. 

 The second effect is a customer mix effect. I show that typically when there are two 

different sized customers, a monopolist will offer the larger customer a lower price than the 

smaller customer. I also show that when there are small numbers of customers and the utility 

function of the seller “has a corner” (i.e., is initially steep and then quickly flattens out) it can 

be optimal for the seller to offer the larger customer a larger price than smaller customers. 

 It may be argued that since firm owners who can diversify their risk prefer their 

firms to maximize expected profit, firms should price as if they are risk neutral.3

 

However, even if owners could diversify away all risk, the literature provides a number of 

reasons why a firm would price as if it were risk averse.4 For example, managers that are 

responsible for setting prices may be risk averse, and compensation schemes based on the 

profitability of a product will induce price setting behavior that is affected by the 

manager’s risk aversion.5 I will also show that firm behavior such as eliminating a 

product line if it does not meet a firm’s target hurdle rate, or offering bonuses to sales 

people if they reach a given target sales level can also cause managers who maximize their 

personal expected wealth to offer larger customers lower prices than smaller customers. 

 The next section reviews the literature on other explanations of quantity 

discounting and shows why these explanations are not consistent with the type of 

 2

 However, there are often incentive pricing mechanisms that result in hospitals purchasing large portions 

of their requirements from a single vendor. 

3

 Fisher’s well known separation theorem states that if owners have perfect access to risk free lending and 

borrowing, no transactions costs and perfect information, then the composition of their portfolio will be 

independent of their measure of risk aversion and they will prefer firms to maximize profit. 4

 See section 8 for a discussion of the literature on this topic. 

5

 It is well understood that when there are risk averse agents “effective contracts balance the gains from 

providing incentives against the costs of forcing employees to bear risk.” Milgrom and Roberts (1992) pg 

208. See also Greenwald and Stiglitz (1990). 
4

quantity discounting examined in this paper. Section 3 presents the benchmark model in 

which a risk neutral monopolist offers no quantity discounts. Section 4 discusses risk 

aversion and the pure customer size effect. Sections 5 and 6 examine the confounding 

effects of changing market size and different sized customers respectively. Extending the 

intuition to competition is discussed in section 7. Section 8 discusses conditions under 

which firms behave as if they are risk averse. Concluding remarks are in section 9. 

2. Current Literature

 The literature has produced a number of explanations for quantity discounts. Cost 

based explanations argue that cost savings associated with serving large buyers relative to 

small buyers, result in quantity discounts that reflect the cost. For example, large 

customers whose order size will result in economies of scale in production or shipping 

can result in such buyers receiving a lower per unit price. 

 Demand based explanations do not appeal to such cost savings. Models such as 

those of Oi (1971) and Maskin and Riley (1989) show that quantity discounts can be used 

to price discriminate between large and small volume users. While such explanations are 

undoubtedly valid in many circumstances, they assume that the seller cannot distinguish 

between high and low volume customers, and uses quantity discounts as a self selection 

mechanism. Such explanations seem ill suited to explain quantity discounting when 

sellers can distinguish between large and small volume customers. 

 Recent work on why larger customers obtain lower prices falls into two categories. 

First, Snyder (1996, 1998) suggests that when sellers tacitly collude, it is more difficult to 

prevent a firm from shading price with respect to a large customer than with respect to a 

small customer. Thus, colluding firms would set lower prices to large customers to reduce 

the unilateral incentive to shade prices to large customers. While this explanation captures a 

reasonable notion that sellers will compete more vigorously to serve a large customer than a 

small customer, a literal interpretation of these results suggest wide spread tacit 

coordination.6 My results differ from those of Snyder in that there is no collusion between 

competing firms. Rather all prices are Nash equilibrium prices of a one shot game. 

 

6

 See DeGraba (2003) for a simpler model in which firms compete more vigorously for larger customers 

but not in which they collude. 
5

 Second, work by Horn and Wolinsky (1988) Chipty and Snyder (1999) and Chae 

and Heidhues (1999a, 1999b) look at bargaining between a monopolist and different size 

buyers. In these models joint surplus between buyers and the seller is increasing, but 

strictly concave in total output. Each buyer views himself as the marginal buyer, and so 

bargains over the marginal surplus assuming that all other buyers have completed their 

bargains. It is assumed that the seller and buyer split the (perceived) surplus, under the 

Nash bargaining solution. The surplus retained by the seller is interpreted as a payment 

from the buyer to the seller. Because the surplus function is concave, the average surplus 

per unit of output is smaller for large buyers than for small buyers. Thus when the surplus 

is split, the seller receives a lower surplus per unit than he receives from small buyers. 

This lower surplus is interpreted as a quantity discount. 

 My results differ from these because in my model neither customers nor sellers treat 

each transaction as if it is the marginal transaction given all other transactions have been 

consummated Also, these other works assume that buyers and sellers divide evenly the 

surplus from a transaction, whereas I determine the division of surplus endogenously. 

 Recent empirical work by Ellison and Snyder (2001) looks at prices negotiated 

between large pharmaceutical companies and drug retailers. They compare prices of a 

drug when it is protected by patents to the prices of the same drug when generic entry 

occurs. They find that large and small drug retailers pay the same wholesale price when 

the drug is protected by patent and the larger buyers are able to secure lower per unit 

prices when there are competing generic drugs. 

 Their interpretation of the result is that large buyers are not able to obtain quantity 

discounts from monopolists. My paper suggests a different interpretation. If a 

monopolist exhibits risk averse behavior, she will offer lower prices to larger buyers if 

there is unobservable heterogeneity in buyers’ valuation of the good. I therefore argue 

that when a drug is protected by patent buyers are essentially homogeneous with respect 

to the drug, since their only options are to sell the drug or not sell the drug, and medical 

plans are likely to pay the same price for the drug across pharmacies. The availability of 

generics creates heterogeneity among buyers because different buyers will have different 

willingnesses to substitute the generic for the branded drug. It is this unobservable 

heterogeneity that causes the drug companies to offer large buyers lower per unit prices. 
6

3. The Benchmark Model 

This section presents the benchmark model in which an expected profit maximizing 

monopolist has no incentive to offer larger buyers a lower price than smaller buyers. There 

is a monopolist who produces a good at zero marginal cost. She faces a set of customers of 

mass 1. A given customer values a fixed number of units, each at the same per unit 

valuation. Each customer’s per unit valuation is a random number uniformly distributed on 

the [0, 1] interval, and is independent of every other customer’s valuation. 

The seller knows the quantity each customer values, but not his valuation.7 Given 

this information she sets a take it or leave it per unit price for each customer. Each customer 

observes his price, and purchases the number of units he values if his valuation is greater 

than or equal to the price.8

 The seller’s payoff is the profit she realizes from sales. 

Observation 1. If the seller maximizes expected profit, then the optimal price for any 

customer is p = 1⁄2.

Proof: For any customer that wished to purchase m units, the expected profit from that 

customer is (1-p)pm. The profit maximizing price satisfies (1-2p)m = 0. Clearly the 

optimal price is 1⁄2 regardless of the value of m. QED

The intuition is that a customer’s maximum expected profit depends only on the 

distribution of his valuation, and is independent of the number of units he values. Thus, 

for the expected profit maximizing seller the optimal price is 1⁄2 for all customers. 

4. The pure customer size effect. 

I now alter the benchmark model by assuming the seller is risk averse and maximizes 

expected utility. I show that this causes her to offer a lower per unit price to larger customers 

than to smaller customers. In this analysis all customers demand the same number of units. I 

 

7

 In the context of GPOs this structure is consistent with the notion that a vendor knows how big each 

hospital (or group of hospitals) is and therefore how much of a given product each will purchase, but is 

unsure of how each hospital will value the vendor’s product relative to other competing products. 8

 This rather simple “negotiation mechanism” has two important features. First, each customer receives his 

own price quote. Second, the incomplete information allows for some efficient transactions not to occur. 

This can be thought of as a proxy for more complex negotiation mechanisms with incomplete information. 
7

compare markets with equal aggregate demand but different numbers of (identically sized) 

customers. This structure embodies the customer size effect. That is, decreasing the number 

of customers holding overall demand fixed, thereby increasing customer size, leads to a 

riskier market. This increased risk creates an incentive for the seller to offer lower prices. 

This structure also has important practical implications, because it suggests that 

increasing customers’ size reduces price. This result is interesting because it assumes no 

market power on the part of customers. In this model customers behave as price takers. 

This analysis is consistent with the GPO example discussed in the introduction in which 

hospitals formed buying groups, increasing the size of each customer while holding the 

overall demand for medical supplies constant.9

 

The monopolist has a concave von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function for 

profit, U(Π), where Π is the profit made from the sales of the good. She chooses prices, 

pj to maximize the expected utility from making sales, where j indexes customers. 

Because Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions are unique up to an affine 

transformation I can normalize U so that U(0) = 0.

10

Proposition 1. An expected utility maximizing seller with a twice continuously 

differentiable concave utility function offers a lower price to a single customer of mass 1 

than to a continuum of customers with mass 1. 

Proof: 

Lemma 1. A risk averse expected utility maximizing seller facing a continuum of 

customers of mass 1 would set price equal to 1⁄2. 

Proof. With a continuum of customers whose valuations are i.i.d. uniform [0, 1], the 

proportion of customers that will purchase at price p’ is 1-p’. Thus, the expected utility 

function facing the seller is E(U) = U((1-p)p) which reaches its maximum at p* = 1⁄2. □ 

Lemma 2. A risk averse expected utility maximizing seller facing a single customer of 

mass 1 with valuation distributed uniformly on [0, 1] sets a price less than 1⁄2. 

 

9

 In the case of GPOs however, not all buying groups increased at the same rate. 

10 Since 0 profit occurs with positive probability, functions such as log(Π) with U(0) undefined are not 

admissible. 
8

Proof. The seller’s objective function is 

 E(U) = (1-p)U(p). (1) 

The first order condition is 

∂E(U)/∂p = (1-p)U’(p) – U(p). (2) 

Evaluating (2) at 1⁄2 yields U(1⁄2) = ∫ ∂ppU

2/1.

0. )(' which, because U is concave is greater than 

1⁄2U’(1⁄2). Thus, ∂E(U)/∂p|1⁄2 < 0, which implies p* < 1⁄2. Figure 1 shows this graphically. 

 □

 QED 

The intuition behind proposition 1 is that when there is a continuum of customers 

the demand function is deterministic, so the seller faces no risk. Thus, she sets prices as if 

she were risk neutral. When facing a single customer, profit is risky, even though the 

expected profit is the same as when facing a continuum of customers. This risk adds a 

cost in expected utility terms to the risk averse seller. To reduce this cost by reducing the 

riskiness of profits, the seller lowers the price. 

 With a continuum of customers the seller’s expected utility is just U of the profit 

function arising from a linear demand curve. This profit function has an optimal price of 

1⁄2. The expected utility with one customer is skewed to the left, so the optimal price is less 

than 1⁄2, as shown in figure 2 below. 

U 

p 

1⁄2 

U(1⁄2)

1⁄2U’(1⁄2) 

U’(1⁄2) 

Figure 1
9

It would seem reasonable to expect that as the number of customers moves from a 

continuum to 1, the profit function would become more skewed to the left resulting in 

lower and lower optimal prices as customers become larger (holding market size 

constant. Proposition 2 compares the price when there are two customers to the price 

when there is one. 

Proposition 2. An expected utility maximizing seller with a twice continuously 

differentiable concave utility function offers a lower price to one customer with mass 1 

than to two customers each with mass 1⁄2.

Proof: The seller’s expected utility when pricing to one customer of mass 1 is 

E(U) = (1-p)U(p) 

The first order condition with respect to p is 

∂E(U)/∂p = (1-p)U’(p) - U(p) = 0. 

Let p* be the solution to this problem. 

The seller’s expected utility when facing two customers of mass 1⁄2 is 

(1-p)U(p) 

E(U) 

1⁄2 

U((1-p)p) 

p

p* 

Figure 2
10

E(U) = (1-p1)(1-p2)U(p1/2+ p2/2) + (1-p1)p2U(p1/2) + p1(1-p2)U(p2/2). 

The first order condition is 

∂E(U)/∂p1 = (1-p2)[(1-p1)U’(p1/2+ p2/2)(1⁄2)-U(p1/2+ p2/2)] + 

 p2[(1-p1)U’(p1/2)(1⁄2)- U(p1/2)] + (1-p2)U(p2/2). 

Setting p1 = p2 = p yields 

(1-p)[(1-p)U’(p)(1⁄2)-U(p)] + p[(1-p)U’(p/2)(1⁄2) - U(p/2)] + (1-p)U(p/2) 

and rearranging a bit yields 

(1-p)[(1-p)U’(p) - U(p1) - (1-p)U’(p)(1⁄2)+ U(p/2)] + p[(1-p)U’(p/2)(1⁄2) - U(p/2)] 

Setting p = p* and noting (1-p*)U’(p*) - U(p*) = 0 

(1-p*)[U(p*/2) - U(p*)(1⁄2)] + p*[(1-p*)U’(p*/2)(1⁄2) - U(p*/2)] 

The first term in square brackets is always positive for U concave and p* < 1⁄2. In the 

second square bracket, (1-p*)U’(p*/2)(1⁄2) is bounded from below by (1-p*)U’(p*)(1⁄2) 

and therefore U(p*)(1⁄2). Thus, when the term in the second square bracket is negative, 

its absolute value is never greater than the term in the first square bracket. Further, since 

p* < 1⁄2 (proven in proposition 1) the first term is always greater than the second term, 

implying ∂E(U)/∂p1|p* is positive. This implies the optimal price when there are two 

customers each of mass 1⁄2 is greater than the optimal price when there is one customer of 

mass 1. QED 

 These results suggest the pricing behavior of the seller mitigates the risk 

associated with the uncertainty of profit resulting from customers’ unobservable 

valuations. In this setting a single customer demanding a quantity of 1 represents a 
11

riskier source of profit (in the sense of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970)11) than multiple 

identical customers whose demands sum to 1. The risk averse seller therefore offers a 

lower price to the single customer to reduce the risk from selling to him. 

 A slightly different interpretation can be inferred from proposition 2 by making 

the following observation. Suppose there were two customers of mass 1⁄2, but their 

valuations were perfectly positively correlated. In this case the seller’s objective function 

would be identical to the objective function of the seller facing a single seller of mass 1. 

Thus, it is not the size of the customer per se that creates the incentive for the seller to set 

the lower price, rather it is the fraction of units for which the reservation prices are 

perfectly correlated that creates the incentive for the seller to offer the lower price. Thus, 

reducing the number of customers holding market size constant (effectively increasing 

the fraction of the units in a market over which each customer can coordinate the 

reservation price) allows customers to extract lower prices from the seller. 

 Since these results hold for any concave utility function, they suggests that the 

fact that risk neutral sellers would set the same price for large and small customers is a 

“razor’s edge” result, and only holds in the cases in which the price setter is exactly risk 

neutral, or in which there is no effective uncertainty regarding customer valuations. Any 

thing that would cause a seller not to maximize expected profits, but instead behave as if 

she were risk averse would result in different prices for different sized customers. 

 The fact that the price depends on the size of the customers even though all customers 

are identical is also significant because it suggest the price difference is not a method of 

extracting different levels of surplus from different size customers (as many quantity 

discounts do). Rather it is a response to the risk that incomplete information regarding 

customers’ reservation prices imposes on the seller. 

 To complete the analysis one would like to “fill in” between the two propositions 

and show that decreasing the number of identical customers from a continuum to one 

would result in a monotonic decrease in the price. At the moment this general result has 

eluded the author. 

 

11 Rothschild and Stiglitz show that for a given distribution f, an alteration to g by a “mean preserving 

spread” makes all risk averters prefer f to g. 
12

 While I have no general results showing that p falls as n is decreased, I have use 

Mathematica to calculated optimal prices for utility functions of the form Πα for α < 1 

and in these examples p and n are positively related. 

5. The market size. 

 I now consider the effects of allowing the market size to increase by increasing the 

quantity of each identical customer by the same percentage. This analysis suggests that the 

price will be affected by how the seller’s risk preferences change as the market size changes. 

I will show constant relative risk aversion causes per unit discounts to remain unchanged as 

all customers increase in size proportionately,12 and suggest that decreasing relative risk 

aversion on the part of the seller may imply an increase in all customers’ demand can result 

in higher prices for all identical customers. 

Proposition 3. Suppose a risk averse expected utility maximizing seller faces n identical 

customers, each of mass m. Assume the utility function of the seller is Πα for 0 < α < 1, 

where Π is the seller’s profit from sales of the good.13 Then the expected utility 

maximizing price is independent of m. 

Proof: For any price, p, the expected utility function of the seller is 

E(U) =∑= −

n

k kkn

n

0 !)!(

! (1-p)

k

p(n-k)[kmp]

α

where k is the number of customers that purchase the good. The first order condition with 

respect to p is 

p

UE

∂

∂ )(

 =∑= −

n

k kkn

n

0 !)!(

! {(1-p)

k

[p(n-k)α[kmp]

α-1km + [kmp]α

(n-k)p(n-k-1)] - p(n-k)[kmp]

α

k(1-p)

k-1

}= 0. 

 

12 Note we cannot use log(Π) because it is undefined at Π= 0 13 This proposition also applies to utility functions of the form -Π-α

 for α > 1. 
13

Since m appears in each term raised to the α power, it can be eliminated from the 

expression, proving p is independent of m. QED

 The intuition behind this result is that with constant relative risk aversion an 

increase in the customers’ size that also increases the size of the market does not affect 

the seller’s risk assessment. Thus, the discount (relative to the expected profit 

maximizing price) is independent of the size of the customers. 

 This result is not limited to a market with identically sized customers. 

Corollary 1. For any market with n different sized customers, m1, m2 ...mn, and a seller 

with a utility function of the form Πα

 for 0 < α < 1, increasing the size of each customer 

by the same percentage, λ, has no effect on the expected utility maximizing price. 

Proof. λ appears in every term of every first order condition raised to the power α and so 

can be eliminated. QED. 

While this result is simple for sellers with constant relative risk aversion, it is not 

so simple for other functions, though the measure of relative risk aversion is still 

important. The utility function of a seller facing a single customer of mass m, is 

E(U) = (1-p)U(pm). 

The first order condition is 

∂E(U)/∂p = (1-p)U’(pm)m - U(pm) = 0 

Letting p* be the solution to this condition, totaling differentiating this with respect to m

and rearranging yields that the sign of ∂p*/∂m is the sign of: 

)*('

*)*("

mpU

mpmpU + 

*1

*21

p

p

−

− .
14

 This example suggests that an increase in size alone is not sufficient to cause 

sellers to offer a lower price. Rather it seems that how a change in size affects the 

seller’s risk aversion is an important factor in determining whether an increase in the size 

of a buyer allows him to command a lower price. 

 To see how an increase in the size of a customer can result in him being offered a 

higher price, suppose there is a single customer of mass m, with per unit valuation 

uniformly distributed on [0, 1]. The seller’s utility function is U(pm) = a + bpm for Π ≥ ε

for ε arbitrarily close to 0 and U = 0 for Π < ε, a, b > 0.14 The seller’s expected utility 

function for Π > ε is 

E(U) = (1-p)(a + bpm). 

Solving the first order condition yields 

p* = 

2

1 - bma

2

 for m ≥ a/b + 2ε, 

p* = ε/m for ε ≤ m < a/b + 2ε, 

∂p*/∂m = a(2bm)

-2 > 0 for m ≥ a/b + 2ε. 

 The intuition behind this result is rather straightforward. The seller’s utility 

consists of 2 pieces, a, which she receives if and only if she makes total sales with value 

of at least ε, and bpm the utility from the profit from sales in excess of ε. For m < a/b + 

2ε, any incremental utility the seller would get from making a sale valued greater than 

ε/m is outweighed by the loss of expected utility from reducing the probability of making 

the sale by setting the price above ε/m. Thus it is optimal for the seller when facing such 

a small customer to set a price equal to ε/m to virtually guarantee a sale is made (even 

though it generates an arbitrarily small profit) and receive a guaranteed utility of a + bε. 
15

 For m > a/b + 2ε the seller is willing to trade off some probability of not making a 

sale for the possibility of increasing profit (and therefore utility) if the sale is made. In 

fact as m approaches ∞, the optimal price approaches 1⁄2 which is the optimal price for a 

risk neutral seller. This is because as m approaches ∞, a becomes relatively less 

important, and the utility function approaches bpm the risk neutral utility function. As m

increases, for any p, the difference between the seller’s expected utility and her utility of 

the expected profit is a decreasing fraction of the expected utility. Thus, the optimal 

prices approach the optimal risk neutral price. 

6. Customer mix effect 

 I now consider conditions under which larger customers receive lower prices than 

smaller customers when the seller serves different sized customers simultaneously. I first 

show that for “sufficiently small” levels of risk aversion a seller facing two different 

sized customers always offers a lower price to the larger customer. I then show that for 

any level of risk aversion, having many small customers and one large customer also 

results in the large customer receiving a lower price than the small customers. 

Finally, I provide numerical analysis using the constant relative risk aversion 

utility function, U = Πα

, which suggests that for lower to moderate levels of risk aversion 

larger customers receive lower prices than smaller customers, but for higher, but not too 

high levels of risk aversion (i.e., for α close to but not too close to 0) there are examples 

in which one large customer is offered a higher price than one small customers. This 

result vanishes as the number of customers increases, holding market size fixed. 

 I assume there are two customers who demand different quantities of the good 

whenever the price is less than their reservation value. The customers’ reservation values 

are i.i.d. and uniformly distributed on [0, 1]. 

Proposition 4. For arbitrarily small levels of risk aversion the seller facing two different 

sized customers sets a lower price to the larger customer. 

 

14 Thus, the seller gets positive utility only if she makes sale valued at ε. Assuming ε = 0 causes the model 

to degenerate to the case of risk neutrality. 
16

Lemma 3. Let pL be the price offered to the large customer and pS be the price offered to 

the small customer. For any pL = pS ≤ 1⁄2, ∂EU/∂pL < ∂EU/∂pS. 

Proof: See appendix 

Lemma 4. For any concave expected utility function, E(U), if for any pL = pS ≤ 1⁄2, ∂E(U)/∂pL

< ∂E(U)/∂pS and if ∂E(U)/∂pi|pi = 1⁄2 < 0 for i ∈{L, S} then there exist a unique profit 

maximizing price pair such that pL < pS. 

Proof. For any pL’ = pS’ < 1⁄2, the condition ∂EU/∂pL < ∂EU/∂pS implies there is a higher 

profit for some any pL < pS < 1⁄2, and that this profit exceeds the profit for any pL > pS 

within an arbitrarily small neighborhood of pL’ = pS’. Concavity implies that the global 

optimum is unique, and must occur where pL < pS. ∂EU/∂pi|pi = 1⁄2 < 0 was established in 

Lemma 2. 

 For the risk neutral case of U = αΠ for α > 0, E(U) = E(Π) and is therefore 

strictly concave in pL and pS. By continuity any arbitrarily small perturbation in U” that 

makes U concave will leave E(U)strictly concave QED

 Proposition 4 suggests that as a seller moves from being risk neutral to just risk 

averse the larger customer becomes a riskier revenue source than the smaller customers and 

so gets a lower price. Proposition 5 provides conditions under which the larger customer 

always receives a lower price than smaller customers for any level of risk aversion. 

Proposition 5. Suppose a risk averse expected utility maximizing seller faces one 

customer of mass m and a continuum of customers with mass 1-m, where all customers 

have per unit valuation i.i.d. uniformly distributed on [0, 1]. The seller sets a lower price 

for the customer with positive mass than for the continuum of customers. 

Proof: Let pL be the price offered to the large customer and pS be the price offered to the 

small (the continuum of) customers and let qS be the quantity demanded by the 

continuum. The continuum generates a demand curve of qS = (1-m)(1-pS). 

The seller’s expected utility function is 
17

E(U) = (1-pL)U(pLm + pSqS) + pLU(pSqS). 

The first order conditions are 

∂E(U)/∂pL = (1-pL)U’(pLm + pSqS)m - U(pLm + pSqS) + U(pSqS) = 0, 

∂E(U)/∂pS = {(1-pL)U’(pLm + pSqS) + pLU’(pSqS)}(1-m)(1-2pS) = 0. 

The last term of ∂E(U)/∂pS implies that pS* = 1⁄2, regardless of the magnitude of m. 

Renormalizing U so that U(pSqS) = 0, allows us to use lemma 2 to show that pL* < 1⁄2. QED

Under the assumptions of proposition 5, the continuum of customers represent a 

riskless source of profits while the customer with positive mass present the seller with a 

risky source of profits. Under these conditions the seller sets prices to maximize the 

expected value of the riskless profit and then chooses the price that maximizes the 

expected utility from the sales to the customer of mass, m. As proposition 1 suggests, the 

seller sets a lower price to the risky customer than she does for the continuum of 

customers that generates the profit that imposes no risk on her. 

Despite propositions 4 and 5, a seller will not always offer lower prices to larger 

customers. Numerical analysis using U = Πα

 and two different sizes of customers yielded 

the following results. For α close to 1, the seller offers the larger customer a lower price than 

the smaller customers. For values of α less than but close to 1⁄2 the prices reverse as the seller 

offers the larger customer a higher price than the smaller customer. For α very close to 0, the 

prices reverse again and the seller offers the larger customer a lower price. Increasing the 

number of small customers reduces the level of α at which the seller offers the larger 

customer a lower price and increasing the number sufficiently eliminates the effect entirely. 

This result is based on the fact that for α close to 0 the seller’s utility function 

initially exhibits a large increase in utility for a very small increase in profit above zero, 

and then exhibits small increases in utility for large increase in profit. It may be helpful to 

consider again the utility function U(Π) = a – bΠ for Π ≥ ε and 0 for Π < ε, for ε arbitrarily 

close to 0. 
18

First consider what happens when b = 0. The seller’s objective is to maximize the 

probability of earning at least ε. With two customers of mass m1, m2 > ε, the optimal prices 

are just p1 = ε/m1 and p2 = ε/m2 so for m1 < m2, p1 > p2. Here, since the seller’s only 

concern is earning at least ε, it is optimal for her to set prices so that if either customer 

makes a purchase, she will earn ε and receive a utility of a.

15 This example corresponds 

roughly to the case of α arbitrarily close to 0. The larger customer receives the lower price. 

 Now let b be positive and suppose m1 < a/b + 2ε and m2 > a/b + 2ε. In this case it 

is optimal to charge customer 1 a price of ε/m1 virtually ensuring this customer 

purchases.16 This allows the seller to behave in an almost risk neutral manner with 

respect to customer 2. In this case she will set p2 close to the expected profit maximizing 

price of 1⁄2. This example has the “unusual feature” that all of the risk aversion in the 

seller’s utility function is embodied in receiving a “large amount of utility” a, for making 

a small sale of ε, and this risk can be virtually eliminated by setting a low price to one of 

the customers. In this case it is optimal to maximize the probability of making a sale to 

the smaller customer yielding revenue of ε, and set the price to the larger customer that 

essentially maximizes expected revenue. This example corresponds to values of α below 

1⁄2 (but sufficiently greater than 0). 

 Eliminating this reversal effect can be accomplished by eliminating the specific 

feature that essentially all of the risk aversion can be eliminated by making a sale to a 

single small customer. One way to eliminate this effect is to consider values of α close to 

1. This mitigates the effect of the “corner” in the utility function and eliminates the 

ability of the seller to eradicate most of the risk by making a sale to just one customer. A 

second factor that eliminates this effect is increasing the number of customers. To see 

why, suppose there are 10 small customers and each is offered a price of 1⁄2. The 

probability that none of these customers purchase is (1⁄2)10. Thus, even with charging 

small customers the expected profit maximizing price the seller is virtually assured of 

making at least one sale valued at ε for ε close enough to zero. 

 

15 A little work is required to show that it is better to set prices so that a sale to only one customer is required to 

earn a profit of ε rather than setting prices such that both customers must purchase in order to obtain ε. 16 Recall from the previous section that m < a/b + 2ε implies the marginal benefit of a price above ε/m is 

less than the cost of the increased probability of not making a sale. 
19

 With this “corner” effect eliminated, the size effect dominates the price setting, 

and the seller offers the larger customer the lower price. 

7. Competing Sellers 

 In this section I present an example that extends the intuition from proposition 2 

to the case of competing firms. In the context of a monopolist it may be difficult to 

justify the take it or leave it pricing assumption. If a customer refuses to purchase at the 

announced price one might believe that the seller would offer the buyer a lower price.17

With competition between sellers a customer that does not purchase from one seller may 

purchase from the other, so that a seller that does not make an initial sale will have no 

opportunity to renegotiate.18 Thus, the purpose of this section is to suggest that the 

intuition developed in the context of the monopolist is consistent with competition. 

 There is a Hotelling line of length 1 with seller 0 located at 0 and seller 1 located 

at 1. Each customer j’s location is a random variable uniformly distributed on [0, 1] and 

independent of the location of other customers. Each customer demands a fixed number 

of units, and has a per unit travel cost of 1 per unit distance traveled per unit purchased.19 

Thus, for example, a customer located at 1/3 and who values 1⁄2 unit has a total travel cost 

of 1/6 to firm 0 and 1/3 to firm 1. Each customer observes the prices set by the firms and 

then purchases from the firm at which the total cost is less. 

 Each seller produces the product at 0 marginal cost, and has a utility function 

(∑jpiqi)

α

 for α ∈ (0, 1). Sellers know the quantity each customer demands, but not his 

location. Thus, prices can be quantity specific prices, but not location specific. 

 Given this structure I consider a game in which each sets seller sets a price for each 

customer simultaneously. Customers’ locations are determined, and they make their 

purchase decisions. Each seller’s payoff is her expected utility from the sales she makes. 

 

17 However a seller may want to develop the reputation for not lowering her price once the offer is made. 

Otherwise all firms would have an incentive to refuse to purchase and wait for a lower price. 

18 One mechanism might be sellers making sealed bids in response to RFPs of buyers, who chooses the lowest bid. 

19 This assumption implies that the total (expected) travel cost remains the same as the number of customers 

increases. The interpretation of this assumption is that buyers view each unit sold by the firms as 

differentiated. For example if completing a procedure using a unit of firm 0’s product take an additional 1⁄2 

hour of labor relative to completing it using a unit of firm 1, then the extra cost from using a unit of firm0’s 

product is a 1⁄2 hour of labor cost and this would occur for each use of a unit. 
20

Proposition 6: The equilibrium price when there is a single customer demanding one unit 

of the good is lower than when there are two customers that each demand 1⁄2 unit.

Proof. When there is a single customer of mass 1, each seller’s objective function is 

E(Ui) = ⎢

⎣

⎡

2

1

+ ⎥

⎦

− − ⎤

2

pp ii (pim)

α

. 

Straightforward analysis shows that the equilibrium price, p* equals α. 

Consider two customers denoted by j ∈{A, B}. Seller i’s objective function is 

E(Ui) = ⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − + −

22

1 pp iAiA

⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − + −

22

1 pp iBiB (1⁄2piA + 1⁄2 piB) + 

⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − + −

22

1 pp iAiA

⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − − −

22

1 pp iBiB (1⁄2piA) + ⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − − −

22

1 pp iAiA

⎥

⎦

⎤ ⎢

⎣

⎡ − + −

22

1 pp iBiB (1⁄2piB) 

Taking first order conditions with respect to pij and setting pi = p-i = p for all j yields: 

∂E(Ui)/∂pij|pi = p-i = p = 1⁄2[1⁄4αpα-1 – 1⁄2pα + 1⁄4α(1⁄2 p)

α-1 – 1⁄2(1⁄2p)α

 + 1⁄2(1⁄2p)

α

]. 

Evaluating this at p = α yields ∂E(Ui)/∂pi = (1/8)[(1⁄2)α-1 – 1]αα

 > 0 for α < 1. Following 

DeGraba (1993) this implies the Nash equilibrium pi* > α for i ∈ {0, 1}.20 QED. 

 This example is a simple extension of the intuition from the monopoly analysis. 

A single customer presents a riskier expected profit than do two customers half his size 

with independently distributed valuations. Competitors respond to the riskier market by 

offering a lower price. 

 

20 DeGraba (1993) shows that in a game with choice variables that are strategic complements, finding a 

point, a+

 at which each customer prefers to increase his strategy choice implies there exists an equilibrium 

in which each customer chooses a value greater than his value at a+

. 
21

8. Why sellers may exhibit risk aversion

 The analysis of the previous sections indicates that when risk averse sellers face 

customers with different demand levels, they have an incentive to offer a lower per unit 

price to the customers with larger demand. This raises the question of why one should 

believe that price setters act as if they are risk averse. There are a number of theoretical 

explanation in the literature for why a firm would behave as if it is risk averse, as well as 

empirical evidence consistent with firms maximizing expected utility.21

 One explanation assumes that owners of a firm employ risk averse price setting 

agents and that the owners are unable to observe perfectly agents’ actions. Greenwold 

and Stiglitz (1990) show that in such situations compensation schemes that are linear in 

the profits of the firm, or simply giving the agents residual claims on the profits of the 

firm will make the firm behave as if it is risk averse. 

 A second explanation is that incomplete information on the part of capital markets 

may not allow the owner of a firm to fully diversify the risk of the firm through accessing 

capital markets. Greenwold and Stiglitz (1990) point out that if the owner of a firm has 

more information about the riskiness of her firm than the market, then she must hold a 

portion of the risk (i.e., hold more of the firm’s equity than in an optimally diversified 

portfolio) to signal this information to the market. This would cause a risk averse owner 

to prefer the firm to maximize her expected utility rather than the firm’s expected profits. 

Mas-Colell et. al. (1995) discuss a general equilibrium model in which uncertain demand 

and risk averse owners result in firms acting as if they are risk averse. 

 Even if the agent were risk neutral, there are a number of commonly used 

incentive mechanism that can induce risk-averse like behavior on the part of price setting 

agents. For example many firms will periodically evaluate projects using hurdle rates. 

That is, they will continue a project only if its rate of return is above some threshold 

level. Assuming a manager of such a project would be fired if the project were 

discontinued, and assuming his other alternative work opportunities offered a lower 

wage, the expected wage maximizing decision of the price setting manager would be to 

set prices to maximize the probability that the hurdle rate is met. 

 

21 Empirical studies include Satyanarayan (1999), Applebaum and Ullah (1997), Park and Antonovitz (1992). 
22

 To see how this can induce mangers to offer lower prices, I extend the notion of 

hurdle rates to the benchmark model by assuming h is a profit level needed for a firm to 

continue a project.22

Proposition 7. When facing a hurdle profit of h, the seller will offer a price to the customer 

of mass 1 that is less than or equal to the price offered to two customers each of mass 1⁄2. 

 

Proof. When there is just one customer, the probability that the project reaches its hurdle 

profit of h is maximized when the price per unit is set at h. 

 

Lemma 5. For h < 2/5 the expected wage maximizing price when facing two customers is 

greater than h. 

Proof. With two customers the only possible candidate prices are h and 2h. The former 

requires that both customers purchase the good for profit to equal h. The latter requires at 

least one customer to purchase. When the price equals h, the probability that both 

customers purchase the good is (1-h)

2

. When the price equals 2h the probability at least 

one customer purchases is 1 – (2h)

2

. 1 – (2h)

2

 - (1-h)

2

 > 0 for h < 2/5. □

For h > 2/5, 1 – (2h)

2

 - (1-h)

2

 < 0, so the optimal price is h. 

For h = 2/5, setting p = h yields the same payoff as setting p = 2h. QED

 The intuition behind this result is that with two customers, setting a price of h

means that both customers would have to purchase in order for the seller to earn h. 

However, for sufficiently low h, it is optimal to set each customer’s price at 2h so that only 

one needs to purchase to generate a profit of h. Of course if there were only one customer 

of mass 1, a price of 2h would be too high to reach h, so it would be optimal to lower the 

price to h to increase (in fact maximize) the probability of earning h without imposing any 

cost on the price setter since there is no benefit for earning any revenue in excess of h. 

 

22 I need not specify how the optimal hurdle rate is calculated, since the proposition is true for all hurdle 

profit levels it must be true for the optimal level. 
23

 There are other incentive mechanisms and institutional facts that mimic the hurdle 

rate analysis above. For example a sales person (with discretion over pricing) who 

receives a bonus only if he reaches a specified sales level would have the same effect as 

the hurdle rate above. The apparent dependence of stock prices on whether firms meet 

their quarterly earnings forecast can give managers the incentive to place a lot of weight 

on meeting earnings forecasts and discount profits above and beyond those forecasts. 

9. Conclusion 

 The question of whether large customers can command lower prices than smaller 

customers has recently gained attention in the research community. This paper offers a 

modest explanation of how this may occur. I have shown that increasing the size of a 

customer, holding the size of the overall market constant increases the riskiness of that 

customer to a seller. In response to this increase in risk, risk averse sellers will reduce 

her price to that customer in order to reduce the risk. 
24

Appendix 

Proof of Proposition 2. 

Show that for p1* < 1⁄2 

(1-p1*)U‘(p1*) -2U(p1*) + p1*U‘(p1*/2) + 2U(p1*/2) – 2p1*/(1-p1*)U(p1*/2) > 0 

Since (1-p1*)U‘(p1*) -U(p1*) = 0 from the first order condition with 1 customer, the 

problem reduces to showing 

-U(p1*) + p1*U‘(p1*/2) + 2U(p1*/2) – 2p1*/(1-p1*)U(p1*/2) > 0. (A.1) 

The proof entails showing that for any twice differentiable utility function, U, condition 

(A.1) holds for a utility function, V, that goes through the point (p1*, U’(p1*)) and is 

linear with slope V’ = U’(p1*) on the interval [p1*/2, p1*]. I then show for any twice 

differentiable concave function U, V over-estimates 2U(p1*/2) by less than it 

underestimates U’(p/2). Thus condition (A.1) also holds for U. 

The appropriate condition in terms of the function V is 

-V(p1*) + p1*V‘(p1*/2) + 2V(p1*/2) – 2p1*/(1-p1*)V(p1*/2) ≥ 0. (A.2) 

Note that because V goes through the point (p1*, U’(p1*)) and has slope U’(p1*), the first 

order condition (1-p1*)V’ – V(p1*) = 0 holds. 

Lemma 6. The first 3 terms in expression = V(p1*) 

Proof: 

2V(p1*/2) = 2{V(p1*) – (p1*/2)V’(p1*)} 

 = 2{(1-p1*)V’(p1*) – (p1*/2)V’(p1*)} 

Thus -V(p1*) + p1*V‘(p1*/2) + 2{(1-p1*)V’(p1*) – (p1*/2)V’(p1*)} = (1-p1*)V’ = V(p1*) □

Lemma 7 The last term, 2p1*/(1-p1*)V(p1*/2) ≤ V(p1*) 

Proof: 

V(p1*/2) = V(p1*) – (p1*/2)V’(p1*) 

 = V(p1*)(1- (p1*/2)V’(p1*)/ V(p1*)) 

 = V(p1*)(1 - (p1*/2)/(1-p1*)) 

2p1*/(1-p1*)V(p1*/2) = 2p1*/(1-p1*)V(p1*)(1 - (p1*/2)/(1-p1*)) 

So proving the lemma means showing that for 0 < p1* < 1⁄2 

 2p1*/(1-p1*)(1 - (p1*/2)/(1-p1*)) < 1. 

For p1* = 0 the expression is zero, for p1* = 1⁄2 the expression is 1, and the sign of this 

expression is the sign of [1 - 2p1*/(1-p1*)] which is positive in the relevant range. □ 
25

Lemma 8. If condition (A.2) holds then condition (A.1) holds. 

Proof: 

It suffices to show that 2V(p1*/2) is less of an overestimate of 2U(p1*/2) than p1*V’ is an 

underestimate of p1*U’(p1*/2), because this would mean the first 3 terms of (A.1) are 

greater than their counterparts in (A.2) and the last term in (A.1) is more negative than its 

counterpart in (A.2). This is a direct result of the concavity of U. The difference 

between the V(p1*/2) and U(p1*/2) is simply (p1*/2)(S’ – V’) where S’ is the slope of the 

line between U(p1*/2) and U(p1*). Thus twice this difference is (p1*)(S’ – V’). The 

difference between (p1*)(V’) and p1*U’(p1*/2) is p1*(U’(p1*/2) – V’). U’(p1*/2) > S’ by 

the concavity of U. □

Proof of Proposition 4 – Lemma 3 

E(U) = (1-pL)(1-pS)U(pLL + pSS) + (1-pL)pSU(pLL) + pL(1-pS)U(pSS) 

∂E(U)/∂pL = (1-pS){(1-pL)U’(pLL + pSS)L - U(pLL + pSS)} + 

pS{(1-pL)U’(pLL)L - U(pLL)} + (1-pS)U(pSS) 

∂E(U)/∂pS = (1-pL){(1-pS)U’(pLL + pSS)S - U(pLL + pSS)} + 

pL{(1-pS)U’(pSS)S - U(pSS)} + (1-pL)U(pLL) 

Set pS = pL 

∂E(U)/∂pL =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)L - U(pL + pS) + p/(1-p){(1-p)U’(pL)L - U(pL)} + U(pS) 

∂E(U)/∂pS =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)S - U(pL + pS) + p/(1-p){(1-p)U’(pS)S - U(pS)} + U(pL) 

∂E(U)/∂pL =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)L+ p[U’(pL)]L - p/(1-p)U(pL) + U(pS) - U(pL + pS) 

∂E(U)/∂pS =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)S + p[U’(pS)]S -p/(1-p)U(pS) + U(pL) - U(pL + pS) 

S’

V(p1*/2)

U(p1*/2) 

U

U’(p1*) 

U(p1*) 

U 

p 

p1*/2 p1* 
26

understate U(pL) as U(pS)+U’(pL)(L-S) in ∂E(U)/∂pL in ∂E(U)/∂pS to overstate 

∂E(U)/∂pL and understate ∂E(U)/∂pS. 

∂E(U)/∂pL =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)L+ p[U’(pL)]L – p/(1-p)[U(pS)+U’(pL)(L-S)]+ U(pS) - U(pL + pS) 

∂E(U)/∂pS =(1-p)U’(pL + pS)S + p[U’(pS)]S – p/(1-p)U(pS) + U(pS)+U’(pL)(L-S) - U(pL + pS) 

subtracting ∂E(U)/∂pS from ∂E(U)/∂pL yields 

∆ = (1-p)U’(pL+pS)(L-S) + p[U’(pL)L- U’(pS)S] - p/(1-p)[U’(pL)(L-S)]-U’(pL)(L-S) 

writing -U’(pL)(L-S) as –[(1-p) – p]U’(pL)(L-S) and rearranging yields 

∆ = (1-p)[U’(pL+pS) -U’(pL)](L-S) + p[U’(pL)S- U’(pS)S] - p/(1-p)[U’(pL)(L-S)] 

∆ < 0 because concavity of U implies (1-p)U’(pL + pS) < U’(pL) < U’(pS) 

Proof of Proposition 5 

For α close to 1 I need to show that, for the p’ at which pL = pS = p’ ∂E(U)/∂pL|p’ = 0, 

∂E(U)/∂pS|p’ > 0, and similarly for the p” at which pL = pS = p” ∂E(U)/∂pS|p” = 0, 

∂E(U)/∂pL|p” < 0. Further I must show that ∂p*S/∂p*L and ∂p*L/∂p*S < 1 for values of pL

and pS between 0 and 1⁄2. 

∂E/∂pL = (1-p)[(1-p)αpα-1L - pα] + p[(1-p)α(pL)

α-1L - (pL)α

]+ (1-p)(pS)

α

 = 0 

∂E/∂pS = (1-p)[(1-p)αpα-1S - pα] + p[(1-p)α(pS)

α-1S - (pS)α

]+ (1-p)(pL)

α

∂E/∂pL =(1-p)αpα-1L - pα + α(pL)

α - p(pL)α

/ (1-p)]+ pSα = 0 
27

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