Willingness to pay in the context of "Behavioral economics"

In mainstream economics, economic surplus, also known as total welfare or total social welfare or Marshallian surplus (after Alfred Marshall), is either of two related quantities:

• Consumer surplus, or consumers' surplus, is the monetary gain obtained by consumers because they are able to purchase a product for a price that is less than the highest price that they would be willing to pay.
• Producer surplus, or producers' surplus, is the amount that producers benefit by selling at a market price that is higher than the least that they would be willing to sell for; this is roughly equal to profit (since producers are not normally willing to sell at a loss and are normally indifferent to selling at a break-even price).

The sum of consumer and producer surplus is sometimes known as social surplus or total surplus; a decrease in that total from inefficiencies is called deadweight loss.

In economics, willingness to accept (WTA) is the minimum monetary amount that а person is willing to accept to sell a good or service, or to bear a negative externality, such as pollution. This is in contrast to willingness to pay (WTP), which is the maximum amount of money a consumer (a buyer) is willing to sacrifice to purchase a good/service or avoid something undesirable. The price of any transaction will thus be any point between a buyer's willingness to pay and a seller's willingness to accept; the net difference is the economic surplus.

Several methods exist to measure consumer willingness to accept payment. These methods can be differentiated by whether they measure consumers' hypothetical or actual willingness to accept, and whether they measure it directly or indirectly.

Bidding is an offer (often competitive) to set a price tag by an individual or business for a product or service or a demand that something be done. Bidding is used to determine the cost or value of something.

Bidding can be performed by a person under influence of a product or service based on the context of the situation. In the context of auctions, financial transactions on international markets, or real estate, the price offer a business or individual is willing to pay is called a bid. In the context of corporate or government procurement initiatives. in Business and Law school students actively bid for high demand elective courses that have a maximum seat capacity though a course bidding process using pre allocated bidding points or e-bidding currency on course bidding systems. The price offer a business or individual is willing to sell is also called a bid. The term "bidding" is also used when placing a bet in card games. Bidding is used by various economic niches for determining the demand and hence the value of the article or property, in today's world of advanced technology, the Internet is a favoured platform for providing bidding facilities; it is a natural way of determining the price of a good in a free market economy.

Choice modelling attempts to model the decision process of an individual or segment via revealed preferences or stated preferences made in a particular context or contexts. Typically, it attempts to use discrete choices (A over B; B over A, B & C) in order to infer positions of the items (A, B and C) on some relevant latent scale (typically "utility" in economics and various related fields). Indeed many alternative models exist in econometrics, marketing, sociometrics and other fields, including utility maximization, optimization applied to consumer theory, and a plethora of other identification strategies which may be more or less accurate depending on the data, sample, hypothesis and the particular decision being modelled. In addition, choice modelling is regarded as the most suitable method for estimating consumers' willingness to pay for quality improvements in multiple dimensions.

In economics, a reservation (or reserve) price is a limit on the price of a good or a service. On the demand side, it is the highest price that a buyer is willing to pay; on the supply side, it is the lowest price a seller is willing to accept for a good or service.

Reservation prices are commonly used in auctions, but the concept can be extended beyond. A party's best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), is closely related to their reservation price. Once a party determines their BATNA, they can further calculate their reservation price. In negotiations surrounding the price of a particular good or service, the reservation price is a singular number. However, this is not the only situation where reservation prices are seen. When multiple issues are being discussed, such as the size of salary and amount of benefits when applying for a new job position, the reservation price would be represented as a package, where multiple requirements need to be met.