Switching costs in competitive health insurance markets: The role of insurers' pricing strategies.

ABSTRACT: Our article deals with pricing strategies in Swiss health insurance markets and focuses on the relationship between basic and supplementary insurance. We analyzed how firms' pricing strategies (i.e., pricing of basic and supplementary products) can create switching costs in basic health insurance markets, thereby preventing competition in basic insurance from working properly. More specifically, using unique market and survey data, we investigated whether firms use bundling strategies or supplementary products as low-price products to attract and retain basic insurance consumers. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to analyze these pricing strategies in the context of insurance/health insurance. We found no evidence of bundling in the Swiss setting. We did however observe that firms

SUBMITTER: Lamiraud K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7496908 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature