Marketing

“The way prices are presented to consumers can have a dramatic effect on purchase patterns as well as on post-purchase satisfaction,” says Assistant Professor Shelle Santana. In a recent paper, she and colleagues explore how drip pricing — a technique where companies advertise only part of a product’s price and reveal other charges later in the buying process — can cause consumers to pay more for a product, even after they’ve been told they’ve overspent and are given the option to change their mind. Santana’s work was cited as part of the Biden Administration’s initiative on Junk Fees and Related Pricing Practices, which aims to “take action on fees that hurt Americans’ pocketbooks and the economy.” 

As the first member of her own family to attend college, lecturer Isaura Beltre ’99 MSIAM ’02 understands firsthand the unique challenges faced by first-generation college students. Today, as associate director of Bentley’s FirstGen Presidential Fellows program, she’s helping ensure that students from similar backgrounds have a successful and rewarding college experience. “Sometimes we focus on the things we don’t have as first-generation students, but we come with so much that is not learned in the classroom,” Beltre shared recently with first-gen graduates. “No one can take from you what you know.”