IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v1y2019i3p257-72.html

Discriminating against Captive Customers

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Armstrong
  • John Vickers

Abstract

We analyze a market where some consumers only consider buying from a specific seller while other consumers choose the best deal from several sellers. When sellers are able to discriminate against their captive customers, we show that discrimination harms consumers in aggregate relative to the situation with uniform pricing when sellers are approximately symmetric, while the practice tends to benefit consumers in sufficiently asymmetric markets. We also show how the asymmetry of markets may be affected by the information that firms have on consumer captivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Armstrong & John Vickers, 2019. "Discriminating against Captive Customers," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 257-272, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:3:p:257-72
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20180581
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180581
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20180581.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:aea:aerins:v:1:y:2019:i:3:p:257-72. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.