IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uea/ueaccp/2004_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Deception, Market Power and Consumer Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Chris M. Wilson

    (Centre for Competition Policy)

Abstract

This paper presents a model in which a firm attempts to gain market power by pricing above the competitive market price and simply trying to persuade illinformed consumers not to search for other lower priced firms. Fictitious price comparisons, or false sale signs could be used in this way to deceptively and profitably deter consumer search. A simplified model shows how this mechanism could exist when combined with moderately enforced consumer regulatory policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris M. Wilson, 2004. "Price Deception, Market Power and Consumer Policy," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2004-01, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    • Handle: RePEc:uea:ueaccp:2004_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/ccp/CCP-04-01.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arbatskaya, Maria & Hviid, Morten & Shaffer, Greg, 2004. "On the Incidence and Variety of Low-Price Guarantees," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(1), pages 307-332, April.
    2. Farrell Joseph, 1993. "Meaning and Credibility in Cheap-Talk Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 514-531, October.
    3. Urbany, Joel E & Bearden, William O & Weilbaker, Dan C, 1988. "The Effect of Plausible and Exaggerated Reference Prices on Consumer Perceptions and Price Search," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 15(1), pages 95-110, June.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Bogumił Kamiński & Maciej Łatek, 2016. "On asymmetric Bertrand duopoly with price uncertainty," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 303-316, December.
    2. Kaminski, Bogumil & Latek, Maciej, 2012. "A Simple Model of Bertrand Duopoly with Noisy Prices," MPRA Paper 41333, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Winkler, Bernhard, 2000. "Which kind of transparency? On the need for clarity in monetary policy-making," Working Paper Series 0026, European Central Bank.
    2. Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2014. "Interim Bayesian Persuasion: First Steps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 469-474, May.
    3. Chan, Jimmy & Suen, Wing, 2009. "Media as watchdogs: The role of news media in electoral competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 799-814, October.
    4. Jorge M. Streb & Gustavo Torrens, 2011. "Meaningful talk," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 443, Universidad del CEMA, revised May 2017.
    5. Gary Charness & Francesco Feri & Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiménez & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "An Experimental Study on the Effects of Communication, Credibility, and Clustering in Network Games," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1530-1543, November.
    6. Baliga, Sandeep & Corchon, Luis C. & Sjostrom, Tomas, 1997. "The Theory of Implementation When the Planner Is a Player," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 15-33, November.
    7. Weisstein, Fei L. & Kukar-Kinney, Monika & Monroe, Kent B., 2016. "Determinants of consumers' response to pay-what-you-want pricing strategy on the Internet," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4313-4320.
    8. Hammad Siddiqi, 2007. "Stock Price Manipulation : The Role of Intermediaries," Finance Working Papers 22280, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    9. Ivan Balbuzanov, 2019. "Lies and consequences," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1203-1240, December.
    10. Debraj Ray & Arthur Robson, 2018. "Certified Random: A New Order for Coauthorship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 489-520, February.
    11. Oliveira-Castro, Jorge M., 2003. "Effects of base price upon search behavior of consumers in a supermarket: An operant analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 637-652, October.
    12. Lai, Ernest K., 2014. "Expert advice for amateurs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-16.
    13. Skreta, Vasiliki & Koessler, Frédéric, 2021. "Information Design by an Informed Designer," CEPR Discussion Papers 15709, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Popkowski Leszczyc, Peter T.L. & Qiu, Chun & He, Yongfu, 2009. "Empirical Testing of the Reference-Price Effect of Buy-Now Prices in Internet Auctions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 211-221.
    15. Simonson, Itamar & Drolet, Aimee L., 2003. "Anchoring Effects on Consumers' Willingness-to-Pay and Willingness-to-Accept," Research Papers 1787, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    16. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 2012. "Optimal low-price guarantees with anchoring," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 393-417, December.
    17. Vaidyanathan, Rajiv & Aggarwal, Praveen, 2020. "Does MSRP impact women differently? Exploring gender-based differences in the effectiveness of retailer-provided reference prices," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    18. Pinar Akman & Morten Hviid, 2005. "A Most-Favoured-Customer Guarantee with a Twist," Working Papers 05-8, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia.
    19. Takeshi Nishimura, 2019. "Informed Principal Problems in Bilateral Trading," Papers 1906.10311, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    20. Adrian de Groot Ruiz & Theo Offerman & Sander Onderstal, 2011. "An Experimental Study of Credible Deviations and ACDC," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-153/1, Tinbergen Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price communications; Search Deterrence; Market Power; Cheap Talk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L49 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uea:ueaccp:2004_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Juliette Hardmad (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esueauk.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.