Interactional price fairness: Establishing a third pillar of price fairness and proposing a measurement scale

Price fairness has been conceptualized in marketing as the interplay of two components inherited from organizational justice theory: distributive fairness (fairness of the outcome) and procedural fairness (fairness of the price-setting process). Yet justice theory itself long ago separated a third dimension—interactional justice—concerning the interpersonal treatment individuals receive when decisions are implemented. This paper argues that a parallel construct exists in pricing and that the field's dominant two-factor view systematically underestimates how much of consumers' overall fairness judgment is driven by how a price is communicated rather than what it is or how it was set. Drawing on interactional justice theory, recent work on dynamic and algorithmic pricing, and the Xia, Monroe and Cox (2004) framework, the construct of Interactional Price Fairness (IPF) is formalized and positioned as a third fairness pillar. A four-dimensional measurement scale is proposed—Respectful Treatment, Interpersonal Honesty, Communicative Transparency, and Responsive Care—accompanied by a 20-item pool, a staged four-study validation roadmap, and managerial implications for advertisers, retailers, and platform designers operating in increasingly interactive commerce environments. The paper contributes to price fairness theory by extending its dimensional structure and provides a practical instrument for future empirical work.