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on Marketing |
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Issue of 2006‒05‒13
three papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao Universidade da Beira Interior |
| By: | John Thanassoulis |
| Abstract: | Mixed bundling in imperfectly competitive industries causes some prices to rise and others to fall. This paper studies under what conditions mixed bundling works for or against the consumer interest. We find that if buyers incur firm specific costs or have shop specific tastes then competitive mixed bundling lowers consumer surplus overall and raises profits - the same is true of competitive volume discounts. Competition without these discounts causes all prices to be kept low as larger customers are targeted; with discounts the prices for heavy users drop, but more is extracted from small users. The consumer surplus result is reversed if the differentiation between components as opposed to firms is key. |
| Keywords: | Bundling, Loyalty Rebates, Volume Discounts, Competitive Price Discrimination |
| JEL: | L11 L41 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:263&r=mkt |
| By: | Grebitus, Carola; Bruhn, Maike |
| Abstract: | Consideration of consumers’ demand for food quality entails several aspects. Quality itself is a complex and dynamic concept, and constantly evolving technical progress may cause changes in consumers’ judgment of quality. To improve our understanding of the factors influencing the demand for quality, food quality must be defined and measured from the consumer’s perspective (Cardello, 1995). The present analysis addresses the issue of food quality, focusing on pork—the food that respondents were concerned about. To gain insight into consumers’ demand, we analyzed their perception and evaluation and focused on their cognitive structures concerning pork quality. In order to more fully account for consumers’ concerns about the origin of pork, in 2004 we conducted a consumer survey of private households. The qualitative approach of concept mapping was used to uncover the cognitive structures. Network analysis was applied to interpret the results. In order to make recommendations to enterprises, we needed to know what kind of demand emerges from the given food quality schema. By establishing the importance and relative positions of the attributes, we find that the country of origin and butcher may be the two factors that have the biggest influence on consumers’ decisions about the purchase of pork. |
| Keywords: | cognitive structures, concept mapping, food quality, network analysis, semantic networks, spreading activation network model. |
| Date: | 2006–05–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12608&r=mkt |
| By: | Ralph-C Bayer (School of Economics, University of Adelaide) |
| Abstract: | In this study we investigate the impact of competition on markets for non-durable goods where intertemporal price discrimination is possible. We develop a simple model of different potential scenarios for intertemporal price discrimination and implement it in a laboratory experiment. We compare the outcomes in monopolies and duopolies. Surprisingly, we find that competition does not necessarily prevent intertemporal price discrimination, as our model predicts. However, competition generally reduces sales prices, but by far less than theory predicts. As expected, competition increases efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Price Discrimination, Oligopoly, Market Experiments. |
| JEL: | L12 L13 C91 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adl:wpaper:2006-06&r=mkt |