Daniel Hosken (Federal Trade Commission) David Reiffen (US Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
Abstract
This paper develops a model of competition among multiproduct retailers that is consistent with observed pricing regularities, such as the facts that virtually all products have large mass points in their price distributions and that most deviations fall below these mass points. The basis of the model is that, when consumers prefer to buy a bundle of goods from the same retailer, a given discount on any one good in the bundle will have a similar effect on consumers' likelihood of visiting that retailer. Consequently, discounts on goods sold by a retailer are substitute instruments for attracting customers, and factors that influence one goods' price will also affect other goods' prices. Hence, if intertemporal price changes are a means of price discriminating (as the literature suggests), then the impact of these changes will be reflected in the prices of many goods - including those for which discrimination is infeasible.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Varian, Hal R, 1980.
"A Model of Sales,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-59, September.
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