Do low-time-value buyers sustain cash prices in pickup-only markets?

Question

I am working on a short paper and would welcome literature pointers or conceptual reactions.

The basic idea concerns pickup-only, low-service physical markets, such as used furniture on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. A seller lists a dresser, couch, appliance, or table for a visible cash price, but the buyer must absorb the hidden costs of the transaction: searching, messaging, coordinating schedules, finding a vehicle, recruiting help, driving to the location, inspecting the item, loading it, and transporting it home.

The familiar economic story is that consumers with high opportunity costs of time pay premiums for convenience. Another familiar story is that consumers with lower opportunity costs of time search more, bargain hunt, and use low-service channels to obtain lower effective prices.

The question I am exploring is whether there is a less-emphasized reverse mechanism in inconvenient physical markets. Low-time-value buyers may not merely pressure prices downward. They may also help sellers sustain the visible cash price by privately absorbing pickup, travel, loading, scheduling, uncertainty, and hassle costs that high-time-value buyers refuse to bear. Without those buyers, the seller might have to lower the cash price, provide delivery or other convenience, or leave the item unsold.

So the proposed mechanism is: the seller receives the sticker price, while the buyer supplies the missing convenience through cheap or flexible time. The buyer may still be acting rationally because the total economic cost is acceptable to that buyer. But from the seller’s perspective, the buyer’s cheap time helps make the listed cash price viable.

I am trying to determine whether this mechanism is already developed in the literature, especially in work on search costs, price dispersion, hassle costs, transaction costs, channel segmentation, or used-goods/platform markets.

More specifically:

Is there existing work that frames low-time-value consumers not only as bargain hunters, but as marginal buyers who sustain seller cash prices in inconvenient channels?
Is this better understood as a variant of search-cost theory, hassle-cost price discrimination, transaction-cost economics, or channel segmentation?
Are there canonical papers I should be engaging beyond the usual search-cost and price-dispersion literature?
Does the mechanism seem conceptually distinct enough to justify a short note or working paper?

I would appreciate any references, objections, or suggestions on how to frame the contribution more precisely.

Answer 1

It sounds to me like this is related to Hassle-Cost Price Discrimination.  give this book a chance: Marshall (2015), Hassle Costs and Price Discrimination (AEJ: Applied). Perhaps is a good start.

It is very interesting what you are doing!

Comments

Thank you for the thoughtful comment and for pointing me to Marshall (2015). I agree there’s a clear family resemblance — hassle costs as a screening device is very relevant here.
However, the mechanism I’m describing runs in the opposite direction from the classic hassle-based price discrimination in Marshall’s soda example. In that setting, the seller intentionally creates hassle to offer a lower cash price to more price-sensitive buyers.
In the raw/inconvenient markets I’m looking at (Facebook Marketplace furniture pickups, Craigslist self-haul items, garage sales, etc.), the hassle is largely natural rather than engineered. A seller lists a used dresser for $350 with “pickup only, no delivery.” The buyer who shows up is often someone with lower time value who’s willing to drive across town, bring help to load it, and work around the seller’s schedule. Their willingness to absorb that hassle allows the seller to sustain a higher cash (sticker) price than would otherwise be viable. Without those buyers, the seller would likely have to drop the visible price further or invest time/money into offering delivery. So low-time-value buyers act as a hidden subsidy propping up the cash price in the unbundled channel.
I’m treating this as a natural dual-channel phenomenon rather than deliberate discrimination. Would love any further thoughts on how this fits (or differs) from the hassle-cost literature.