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Quantity Precommitment and Price Matching

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  • Norovsambuu Tumennasan

    () (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark)

Abstract

We revisit the question of whether price matching is anti-competitive in a capacity constrained duopoly setting. We show that the effect of price matching depends on capacity. Specifically, price matching has no effect when capacity is relatively low, but it benefits the firms when capacity is relatively high. Interestingly, when capacity is in an intermediate range, price matching benefits only the small firm but does not affect the large firm in any way. Therefore, one has to consider capacity seriously when evaluating if price matching is anti-competitive. If the firms choose their capacities simultaneously before pricing decisions, then the effect of price matching is either pro-competitive or ambiguous. We show that if the cost of capacity is high, then price matching can only (weakly) decrease the market price. On the other hand, if the cost of capacity is low, then the effect of price matching on the market price is ambiguous due to the multiplicity of equilibria. Therefore, this paper challenges the widely accepted belief that price matching is an anti-competititive practice if the firms choose their capacities simultaneously before pricing decisions.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus in its series Economics Working Papers with number 2011-13.

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Length: 26
Date of creation: 12 Sep 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2011-13

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Web page: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/

Related research

Keywords: Price matching; capacity constraint; quantity precommitment;

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  1. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 1999. "Hassle Costs: The Achilles' Heel of Price-Matching Guarantees," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(4), pages 489-521, December.
  2. Maria Arbatskaya & Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 1999. "On the incidence and Variety of Low-Price Guarantees," CIE Discussion Papers 1999-10, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics.
  3. Sridhar Moorthy & Ralph A. Winter, 2006. "Price‐matching guarantees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 449-465, 06.
  4. Belton, Terrence M., 1987. "A model of duopoly and meeting or beating competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 399-417.
  5. Kaplan, Todd R., 2000. "Effective price-matching: a comment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(8), pages 1291-1294, December.
  6. Png, I P L & Hirshleifer, D, 1987. "Price Discrimination through Offers to Match Price," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 365-83, July.
  7. Doyle, Christopher, 1988. "Different selling strategies in Bertrand oligopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 387-390.
  8. Subhasish Dugar & Todd Sorensen, 2006. "Hassle Costs, Price-Matching Guarantees and Price Competition: An Experiment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 359-378, June.
  9. Osborne, Martin J. & Pitchik, Carolyn, 1983. "Price Competition in a Capacity-Constrained Duopoly," Working Papers 83-08, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  10. Joseph E. Stiglitz & G. Frank Mathewson (ed.), 1986. "New Developments in the Analysis of Market Structure," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262690934.
  11. Corts, Kenneth S., 1995. "On the robustness of the argument that price-matching is anti-competitive," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(3-4), pages 417-421, March.
  12. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
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