Team learning behavior, value-based pricing, and information processing in start-up pricing teams

Pricing innovative products remains a central challenge for start-ups, particularly in dynamic environments with rapidly evolving customer preferences. Although prior research highlights the strategic importance of pricing, we know little about how start-ups process information to support decision-making. Addressing this gap, we integrate organizational learning theory with contingency theory to examine how team learning behavior relates to two information processing modes: rationality and intuition. We use data from 249 start-up CEOs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, each reporting on pricing decisions for innovative products. Our findings, based on CEOs’ perceptions, show that team learning behavior is positively associated with reliance on rationality and negatively associated with dependence on intuition. Contrary to our expectations, value-based pricing does not strengthen these relationships. Instead, it is associated with a weaker relationship between team learning behavior and rationality, a pattern consistent with a misfit between the informational demands of value-based pricing and the scarce data available for innovative products. We contribute to the literature by uncovering the cognitive processes associated with how pricing teams learn, adapt, and make decisions under uncertainty, by highlighting the contingent role of strategic context in shaping these processes, and by deriving implications for entrepreneurs and start-up support programs.