“Pay what you want” benefits companies, consumers, charities http://bit.ly/d9yk1l
When pay nothing is an option, there will be a group of people who will pay nothing, but like Radiohead found, the total revenue from pay-what-you-want can be (is always?) higher. This article is interesting because they tried a number of strategies that took average profit per person from 6-7c with the normal fixed price option, up to 20c per person.
According to the authors, the “pay what you want†strategy works because it allows companies to chare social responsibility with consumers. When buyers are able to set prices in a way that directly shows their support for a cause, everybody wins.