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Entanglement between Demand and Supply in Markets with Bandwagon Goods

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  • Mirta B. Gordon
  • Jean-Pierre Nadal
  • Denis Phan
  • Viktoriya Semeshenko

Abstract

Whenever customers' choices (e.g. to buy or not a given good) depend on others choices (cases coined 'positive externalities' or 'bandwagon effect' in the economic literature), the demand may be multiply valued: for a same posted price, there is either a small number of buyers, or a large one -- in which case one says that the customers coordinate. This leads to a dilemma for the seller: should he sell at a high price, targeting a small number of buyers, or at low price targeting a large number of buyers? In this paper we show that the interaction between demand and supply is even more complex than expected, leading to what we call the curse of coordination: the pricing strategy for the seller which aimed at maximizing his profit corresponds to posting a price which, not only assumes that the customers will coordinate, but also lies very near the critical price value at which such high demand no more exists. This is obtained by the detailed mathematical analysis of a particular model formally related to the Random Field Ising Model and to a model introduced in social sciences by T C Schelling in the 70's.

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  • Mirta B. Gordon & Jean-Pierre Nadal & Denis Phan & Viktoriya Semeshenko, 2012. "Entanglement between Demand and Supply in Markets with Bandwagon Goods," Papers 1209.1321, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1209.1321
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Teun Adriaansen & Dieter Armbruster & Karl Kempf & Hongmin Li, 2013. "An Agent Model For The High-End Gamers Market," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(07), pages 1-33.
    3. Jean Philippe Bouchaud & Matteo Marsili & Jean-Pierre Nadal, 2023. "Application of spin glass ideas in social sciences, economics and finance," Post-Print hal-04145594, HAL.
    4. Rosario Maggistro & Paolo Pellizzari & Elena Sartori & Marco Tolotti, 2022. "Dangerous tangents: an application of $$\Gamma $$ Γ -convergence to the control of dynamical systems," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(2), pages 451-480, December.
    5. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Matteo Marsili & Jean-Pierre Nadal, 2023. "Application of spin glass ideas in social sciences, economics and finance," Papers 2306.16165, arXiv.org.

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