IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ijrema/v38y2021i4p953-973.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Violation behavior in vertical restraint: Empirical analyses in the case of retail price maintenance

Author

Listed:
  • Xiao, Ping
  • (Jack) Chen, Xinlei
  • Chen, Yuxin
  • Lu, Wei

Abstract

An extensive body of work within the marketing and economics literature has been devoted to studying vertical restraints, yet only a few researchers have investigated the violation behavior of retailers. In this paper, we investigate violation behavior in the context of retailer price maintenance. We investigate this behavior using a unique data set from a subsidy program in China, which includes transaction-level information that shows retail price maintenance (RPM) practices in multiple product categories by multiple manufacturers across multiple markets. The results from our fixed effects regression show that retailer violations are more likely to occur when intra-product competition is high. However, how retailer violation likelihood varies with inter-product competition may depend on the product category. We find that inter-product competition, is negatively associated with the likelihood of violation, for “less popular” product categories in the program such as washing machines, air conditioners, etc., but is positively associated with the likelihood of violation for “popular” product categories such as refrigerators, televisions, and cell phones. Our research provides some of the first empirical evidence about retailer violation behavior under RPM in the world’s largest emerging market by focusing on the relationship between violation behavior and market structure. We discuss the implications for monitoring efforts of manufacturers and regulators.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiao, Ping & (Jack) Chen, Xinlei & Chen, Yuxin & Lu, Wei, 2021. "Violation behavior in vertical restraint: Empirical analyses in the case of retail price maintenance," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 953-973.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:38:y:2021:i:4:p:953-973
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2020.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811620301099
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2020.12.001?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. Thomas W. Gilligan, 1986. "The Competitive Effects of Resale Price Maintenance," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(4), pages 544-556, Winter.
    2. Ayelet Israeli & Eric T. Anderson & Anne T. Coughlan, 2016. "Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 539-564, July.
    3. Comanor, William S & Frech, H E, III, 1985. "The Competitive Effects of Vertical Agreements?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 539-546, June.
    4. Raymond Deneckere & Howard P. Marvel & James Peck, 1996. "Demand Uncertainty, Inventories, and Resale Price Maintenance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 885-913.
    5. Mueller, Willard F & Geithman, Frederick E, 1991. "An Empirical Test of the Free Rider and Market Power Hypotheses," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(2), pages 301-308, May.
    6. Ippolito, Pauline M & Overstreet, Thomas R, Jr, 1996. "Resale Price Maintenance: An Economic Assessment of the Federal Trade Commission's Case against the Corning Glass Works," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(1), pages 285-328, April.
    7. Bailey Elizabeth M & Leonard Gregory K, 2010. "Minimum Resale Price Maintenance: Some Empirical Evidence from Maryland," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8, March.
    8. Timothy W. McGuire & Richard Staelin, 1983. "An Industry Equilibrium Analysis of Downstream Vertical Integration," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(2), pages 161-191.
    9. Howard P. Marvel & Stephen McCafferty, 1984. "Resale Price Maintenance and Quality Certification," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 346-359, Autumn.
    10. G.F. Mathewson & R.A. Winter, 1984. "An Economic Theory of Vertical Restraints," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 27-38, Spring.
    11. Klein, Benjamin & Murphy, Kevin M, 1988. "Vertical Restraints as Contract Enforcement Mechanisms," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 265-297, October.
    12. Ornstein, Stanley I & Hanssens, Dominique M, 1987. "Resale Price Maintenance: Output Increasing or Restricting? The Case of Distilled Spirits in the United States," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 1-18, September.
    13. Wilfred Amaldoss & Sanjay Jain, 2002. "David vs. Goliath: An Analysis of Asymmetric Mixed-Strategy Games and Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(8), pages 972-991, August.
    14. Gary Charness & Kay-Yut Chen, 2002. "Minimum Advertised-Price Policy Rules and Retailer Behavior: An Experiment by Hewlett-Packard," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 32(5), pages 62-73, October.
    15. Ping Xiao & Ruli Xiao & Yitian (Sky) Liang & Xinlei (Jack) Chen & Wei Lu, 2020. "The Effects of a Government’s Subsidy Program: Accessibility Beyond Affordability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(7), pages 3211-3233, July.
    16. Bruno Jullien & Patrick Rey, 2007. "Resale price maintenance and collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(4), pages 983-1001, December.
    17. Mueller, Willard F. & Geithman, Frederick E., 1991. "An Empirical Test of the Free Rider and Market Power Hypothesis," Working Papers 204112, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Food System Research Group.
    18. Ronald A. Dye, 1986. "Optimal Monitoring Policies in Agencies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 339-350, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bakó, Barna & Kálecz-Simon, András, 2012. "Vertikális korlátozások - növelik vagy csökkentik a jólétet?. Érvek az irodalomból [Vertical constraints - do they increase or reduce welfare?. Arguments in the literature]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1138-1159.
    2. Ayelet Israeli & Eric T. Anderson & Anne T. Coughlan, 2016. "Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(4), pages 539-564, July.
    3. John Asker & Heski Bar-Isaac, 2010. "Exclusionary Minimum Resale Price Maintenance," NBER Working Papers 16564, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Hao Wang, 2005. "Retailer Heterogeneity, Intra-Brand Competition and Social Welfare," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 87-97, June.
    5. Ingene, Charles A. & Parry, Mark E. & Xu, Zibin, 2020. "Resale Price Maintenance: Customer Service Without Free Riding," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(4), pages 563-577.
    6. John Asker & Heski Bar-Isaac, 2020. "Vertical Information Restraints: Pro- and Anticompetitive Impacts of Minimum-Advertised-Price Restrictions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 111-148.
    7. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Wey, Christian, 2023. "Resale price maintenance in a successive monopoly model," DICE Discussion Papers 395, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    8. Ralph A. Winter, 2009. "Presidential Address: Antitrust restrictions on single-firm strategies," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1207-1239, November.
    9. Emanuele Giovannetti & Laura Magazzini, 2013. "Resale Price Maintenance: An Empirical Analysis of UK Firms' Compliance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(11), pages 582-595, November.
    10. Bang, Se Hoon & Jin, Yangsoo, 2015. "Brand-specificity of pre-sale services and inter-brand competition with resale price maintenance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-9.
    11. Staahl Gabrielsen, Tommy & Johansen, Bjørn Olav & Shaffer, Greg, 2018. "When is Double Marginalization a Problem?," Working Papers in Economics 7/18, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    12. Kenji, Matsui, 2011. "Resale price maintenance for supply chains distributing products with demand uncertainty," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 375-387, December.
    13. Tarcisio da Graça & Robert Masson, 2017. "Flawed Economic Models Have Misled RPM Policy: Changes in Canada, Europe and the United States," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 50(2), pages 181-207, March.
    14. Foros, Øystein & Kind, Hans Jarle & Shaffer, Greg, 2015. "Apple's Agency Model and the Role of Resale Price Maintenance," Discussion Papers 2015/32, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    15. Haucap, Justus & Klein, Gordon J., 2012. "Einschränkungen der Preisgestaltung im Einzelhandel aus wettbewerbsökonomischer Perspektive," DICE Ordnungspolitische Perspektiven 22, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    16. Jürgen-Peter Kretschmer, 2014. "How to deal with resale price maintenance: What can we learn from empirical results?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 343-368, October.
    17. Kawaguchi, Kohei & Qiu, Jeff & Zhang, Yi, 2022. "Competitive Effects of Resale Price Maintenance Through Inventory: Evidence from Publishing Industry," SocArXiv wma6p, Center for Open Science.
    18. Benjamin Klein, 2014. "The Evolving Law and Economics of Resale Price Maintenance," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(S3), pages 161-179.
    19. Zhiyong Liu & Yue Qiao, 2017. "Vertical Restraints, the Sylvania Case, and China’s Antitrust Enforcement," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(2), pages 193-215, September.
    20. De los Santos, Babur & Kim, In Kyung & Lubensky, Dmitry, 2018. "Do MSRPs decrease prices?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 429-457.
      • Babur De los Santos & In Kyung Kim & Dmitry Lubensky, 2013. "Do MSRPs Decrease Prices?," Working Papers 2013-13, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.

    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:ijrema:v:38:y:2021:i:4:p:953-973. 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: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-research-in-marketing/ .

    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.