Towards a SaaS pricing cookbook: A multi-vocal literature review

Abstract

Informed SaaS pricing decision-making requires the involvement of different business units and integrated pricing approaches. Achieving both appears to be challenging for a lot of SaaS providers, and despite its declared importance, pricing is one of the most under-managed business processes. Small and medium-sized companies do not have the resources for or the understanding of how to make informed decisions on pricing strategy and tactics. Pricing is a topic of interest in several research domains including economics, management science, digital and service marketing, and, increasingly, in software engineering. Still, the lack of integration between studies creates inconsistency in research. A comprehensive SaaS pricing body of knowledge is missing, as is a coherent action-oriented “Cookbook”. This multi-vocal literature review both brings together results from these research domains and matches practitioner expertise with academic research outcomes to promote the advancement of SaaS pricing theory and practice.