IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v124y2014i2p278-282.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bundled discounts: Strategic substitutes or complements?

Author

Listed:
  • Brito, Duarte
  • Vasconcelos, Helder

Abstract

Bundled discounts by pairs of otherwise independent firms play an increasingly important role as a strategic tool in several industries. Given that prices of firms competing for the same consumers are strategic complements, one would expect their discounts levels also to be strategic complements. However, in this paper we show that under some circumstances bundled discounts may be strategic substitutes. This occurs under vertically differentiated products where a low quality pair of producers may indeed prefer to lower its discount after an increase in the discount offered by a high quality pair of producers.

Suggested Citation

  • Brito, Duarte & Vasconcelos, Helder, 2014. "Bundled discounts: Strategic substitutes or complements?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 278-282.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:124:y:2014:i:2:p:278-282
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2014.05.031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176514002080
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2014.05.031?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jaskold Gabszewicz, J. & Thisse, J. -F., 1979. "Price competition, quality and income disparities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 340-359, June.
    2. Joshua S. Gans & Stephen P. King, 2006. "Paying For Loyalty: Product Bundling In Oligopoly," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(1), pages 43-62, March.
    3. Bulow, Jeremy I & Geanakoplos, John D & Klemperer, Paul D, 1985. "Multimarket Oligopoly: Strategic Substitutes and Complements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 488-511, 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. Hui‐Ling Chung & Jin‐Li Hu & Yan‐Shu Lin, 2022. "The leverage effect of bundling on monopoly power and product quality," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(6), pages 668-688, December.

    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. Terrence August & Hyoduk Shin & Tunay I. Tunca, 2018. "Generating Value Through Open Source: Software Service Market Regulation and Licensing Policy," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(1), pages 186-205, March.
    2. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    3. Naoto Jinji, 2003. "Strategic policy for product R&D with symmetric costs," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(4), pages 993-1006, November.
    4. Matteo Alvisi & Emanuela Carbonara & Francesco Parisi, 2011. "Separating complements: the effects of competition and quality leadership," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 103(2), pages 107-131, June.
    5. Markus Reisinger & Jens Schmidt & Nils Stieglitz, 2021. "How Complementors Benefit from Taking Competition to the System Level," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 5106-5123, August.
    6. Rosenkranz, Stephanie, 2003. "Simultaneous choice of process and product innovation when consumers have a preference for product variety," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 183-201, February.
    7. Garella, Paolo G. & Lambertini, Luca, 2014. "Bidimensional vertical differentiation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-10.
    8. Lambertini, Luca & Tampieri, Alessandro, 2012. "Low-quality leadership in a vertically differentiated duopoly with Cournot competition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 396-398.
    9. Boccard, N. & Wauthy, X.Y., 2010. "Equilibrium vertical differentiation in a Bertrand model with capacity precommitment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 288-297, May.
    10. Etro, Federico, 2016. "Research in economics and industrial organization," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 511-517.
    11. Bilanakosa, Christos & Heywood, John S. & Sessions, John & Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos, 2017. "Worker Training and Quality Competition," GLO Discussion Paper Series 137, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    12. Bonanno, Giacomo & Haworth, Barry, 1998. "Intensity of competition and the choice between product and process innovation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 495-510, July.
    13. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, July.
    14. Fluet, Claude & Garella, Paolo G., 2002. "Advertising and prices as signals of quality in a regime of price rivalry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 907-930, September.
    15. Juan‐Pablo Montero & Juan Ignacio Guzman, 2010. "Output‐Expanding Collusion In The Presence Of A Competitive Fringe," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 106-126, March.
    16. Rodney Beard, 2015. "N-Firm Oligopoly With General Iso-Elastic Demand," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(4), pages 336-345, October.
    17. Michael Cohen & Rui Huang, 2012. "Corporate Social Responsibility for Kids’ Sake: A Dynamic Model of Firm Participation," Working Papers 12, University of Connecticut, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Charles J. Zwick Center for Food and Resource Policy.
    18. Matsui, Kenji, 2020. "Optimal bargaining timing of a wholesale price for a manufacturer with a retailer in a dual-channel supply chain," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(1), pages 225-236.
    19. Ashantha Ranasinghe & Xuejuan Su, 2023. "When social assistance meets market power: A mixed duopoly view of health insurance in the United States," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 851-869, October.
    20. María Fernanda Viecens, 2009. "Compatibility with Firm Dominance," Working Papers 2009-12, FEDEA.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bundled discounts; Bilateral bundling; Strategic substitutes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    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:eee:ecolet:v:124:y:2014:i:2:p:278-282. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.