Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Sales by multi-product retailers

Contents:

Author Info

  • Timothy J. Richards

    (Morrison School of Agribusiness, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA)

Abstract

This paper examines the rationale underlying periodic price promotions, or sales, for perishable food products by supermarket retailers. Whereas previous studies explain sales in a single-product context as arising from informational, storage cost, or demand heterogeneity, this study focuses on the central role of retailers as multi-product sellers of complementary goods. By offering a larger number of discounted products within a particular category, retailers are able to attract a sufficient number of customers to offset the effect of lower margins on sale items by selling more high-margin items. The implications that emerge from the resulting mixed-strategy equilibrium are tested in a product-level, retail-scanner data set of fresh fruit sales. Hypotheses regarding the rationale and effectiveness of sales are tested by estimating econometric models that describe (1) the number of sales items per store, (2) the depth of a given sale, and (3) promotion effectiveness on store-level demand. The results of this econometric analysis support the hypothesis that the breadth and depth of price promotions are complementary marketing tools, thus explaining how EDLP and HI-LO store formats can exist in the same monopolistically competitive market equilibrium. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/mde.1251
File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. in its journal Managerial and Decision Economics.

Volume (Year): 27 (2006)
Issue (Month): 4 ()
Pages: 261-277

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:27:y:2006:i:4:p:261-277

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/7976

Related research

Keywords:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Cotterill, Ronald W & Putsis, William P, Jr & Dhar, Ravi, 2000. "Assessing the Competitive Interaction between Private Labels and National Brands," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(1), pages 109-37, January.
  2. David Besanko & Sachin Gupta & Dipak Jain, 1998. "Logit Demand Estimation Under Competitive Pricing Behavior: An Equilibrium Framework," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(11-Part-1), pages 1533-1547, November.
  3. Pratt, John W & Wise, David A & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1979. "Price Differences in Almost Competitive Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 189-211, May.
  4. Banks, Jeffrey & Moorthy, Sridhar, 1999. "A model of price promotions with consumer search," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 371-398, April.
  5. Edward P. Lazear, 1984. "Retail Pricing and Clearance Sales," NBER Working Papers 1446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Green, Edward J. & Porter, Robert H., 1982. "Noncooperative Collusion Under Imperfect Price Information," Working Papers 367, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
  7. Aguirregabiria, Victor, 1999. "The Dynamics of Markups and Inventories in Retailing Firms," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(2), pages 275-308, April.
  8. Shilony, Yuval, 1977. "Mixed pricing in oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 373-388, April.
  9. van Praag, Bernard & Bode, Ben, 1992. "Retail pricing and the costs of clearance sales : The formalisation of a rule of thumb," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 945-962, May.
  10. Gerstner, Eitan & Hess, James D, 1991. "A Theory of Channel Price Promotions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 872-86, September.
  11. Rajiv Lal & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 1998. "Price Promotions and Trade Deals with Multiproduct Retailers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(7), pages 935-949, July.
  12. Stokey, Nancy L, 1979. "Intertemporal Price Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 355-71, August.
  13. Pashigian, B Peter, 1988. "Demand Uncertainty and Sales: A Study of Fashion and Markdown Pricin g," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 936-53, December.
  14. Blundell, Richard & Smith, Richard J., 1994. "Coherency and estimation in simultaneous models with censored or qualitative dependent variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1-2), pages 355-373.
  15. Jennifer F. Reinganum, 1978. "A Simple Model of Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Discussion Papers 335, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
  16. Alan T. Sorensen, 2000. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion in Retail Markets for Prescription Drugs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(4), pages 833-862, August.
  17. Scott A. Neslin & Caroline Henderson & John Quelch, 1985. "Consumer Promotions and the Acceleration of Product Purchases," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(2), pages 147-165.
  18. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-69, July.
  19. Warner, Elizabeth J & Barsky, Robert B, 1995. "The Timing and Magnitude of Retail Store Markdowns: Evidence from Weekends and Holidays," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(2), pages 321-52, May.
  20. Villas-Boas, J Miguel, 1995. "Models of Competitive Price Promotions: Some Empirical Evidence from the Coffee and Saltine Crackers Markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(1), pages 85-107, Spring.
  21. John Mullahy, 1997. "Instrumental-Variable Estimation Of Count Data Models: Applications To Models Of Cigarette Smoking Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 586-593, November.
  22. Steven T. Berry, 1994. "Estimating Discrete-Choice Models of Product Differentiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 242-262, Summer.
  23. Cameron, A Colin & Trivedi, Pravin K, 1986. "Econometric Models Based on Count Data: Comparisons and Applications of Some Estimators and Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 29-53, January.
  24. McAfee R. Preston, 1995. "Multiproduct Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 83-105, October.
  25. John McMillan & Peter B. Morgan, 1988. "Price Dispersion, Price Flexibility, and Repeated Purchasing," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 21(4), pages 883-902, November.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Jens-Peter Loy & Christoph R. Weiss, 2009. "Sales by multi-product retailers: a comment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(8), pages 513-515.
  2. Marcelo Delajara & José Antonio Murillo Garza, 2012. "Weekday with Low Prices: Evidence on Daily Seasonality of Foods, Beverages, and Tobacco Prices," Working Papers 2012-09, Banco de México.
  3. Hoffman, Angela & Senkler, Heike, 2011. "Interformat price competition of multi-product retailers: Evidence for German grocery retailing," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114533, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
  4. Ebbing, Alexandra, 2012. "Verkaufsförderung Im Lebensmitteleinzelhandel: Empirische Analyse Im Raum Giessen," 52nd Annual Conference, Stuttgart, Germany, September 26-28, 2012 137145, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
  5. Sebnem Bahadir-Lust & Jens-Peter Loy & Christoph R. Weiss, 2007. "Are they always offering the lowest price? An empirical analysis of the persistence of price dispersion in a low inflation environment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 777-788.
  6. Hansen, Kristin & Loy, Jens-Peter, 2007. "Multiproduct Food Retail Sales: A Case Study for Germany," 2007 1st Forum, February 15-17, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria 6568, International European Forum on Innovation and System Dynamics in Food Networks.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:27:y:2006:i:4:p:261-277

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing) or (Christopher F. Baum).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.