IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ccp/wpaper/wp08-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Matching Own Prices, Rivals' Prices, or Both

Author

Listed:
  • Morten Hviid

    (ESRC Centre for Competition Policy and Norwich Law School, University of East Anglia)

  • Greg Shaffer

    (ESRC Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, and Simon School of Business, University of Rochester)

Abstract

Many retailers promise that they will not be undersold by rivals (price-matching guarantees) and extend their promise to include their own future prices (most-favored-customer clauses). This is puzzling because the extant literature has shown that each promise independently has the potential to facilitate supracompetitive prices, and so one might think that the two promises are substitutes. In this paper, we consider why a firm might make both promises in the same guarantee, and show that price-matching guarantees and most-favored-customer clauses complement each other and can lead to higher prices than either one could have facilitated by itself.

Suggested Citation

  • Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 2008. "Matching Own Prices, Rivals' Prices, or Both," Working Papers 08-26, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia.
    • Handle: RePEc:ccp:wpaper:wp08-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ccp.uea.ac.uk/publicfiles/workingpapers/CCP08-26.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    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. Zhiqi Chen, 1995. "How Low Is a Guaranteed-Lowest-Price?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(3), pages 683-701, August.
    3. Monika Schnitzer, 1994. "Dynamic Duopoly with Best-Price Clauses," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 186-196, Spring.
    4. Corts, Kenneth S., 1997. "On the competitive effects of price-matching policies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 283-299, May.
    5. Neilson, William S. & Winter, Harold, 1992. "Unilateral most-favored-customer pricing : A comparison with Stackelberg," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 229-232, February.
    6. Thomas E. Cooper, 1986. "Most-Favored-Customer Pricing and Tacit Collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 377-388, Autumn.
    7. Neilson, William S. & Winter, Harold, 1994. "Enhancing bargaining power with most-favored-customer pricing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 61-66.
    8. Png, I P L & Hirshleifer, D, 1987. "Price Discrimination through Offers to Match Price," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 365-383, July.
    9. Doyle, Christopher, 1988. "Different selling strategies in Bertrand oligopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 387-390.
    10. 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.
    11. Edlin, Aaron S. & Emch, Eric R., 1999. "The Welfare Losses from Price-Matching Policies," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt43b7w47c, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    12. Arbatskaya, Maria & Hviid, Morten & Shaffer, Greg, 2006. "On the use of low-price guarantees to discourage price cutting," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1139-1156, November.
    13. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 1999. "Hassle Costs: The Achilles' Heel of Price‐Matching Guarantees," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(4), pages 489-521, December.
    14. William S. Neilson & Harold Winter, 1993. "Bilateral Most-Favored-Customer Pricing and Collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(1), pages 147-155, Spring.
    15. Logan, John W. & Lutter, Randall W., 1989. "Guaranteed lowest prices: do they facilitate collusion?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 189-192, December.
    16. Cooper, Thomas E. & Fries, Timothy L., 1991. "The most-favored-nation pricing policy and negotiated prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 209-223, June.
    17. Sridhar Moorthy & Ralph A.Winter, 2006. "Price-Matching Guarantees," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 449-465, Summer.
    18. Corts, Kenneth S., 1995. "On the robustness of the argument that price-matching is anti-competitive," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(3-4), pages 417-421, March.
    19. Edlin, Aaron S & Emch, Eric R, 1999. "The Welfare Losses from Price-Matching Policies," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 145-167, June.
    20. Arbatskaya, Maria, 2001. "Can low-price guarantees deter entry?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(9), pages 1387-1406, November.
    21. Zhang, Z John, 1995. "Price-Matching Policy and the Principle of Minimum Differentiation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 287-299, September.
    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. Tingliang Huang & Zhe Yin & Ying-Ju Chen, 2017. "Managing Posterior Price Matching: The Role of Customer Boundedly Rational Expectations," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 385-402, July.
    2. Elhauge, Einer & Wickelgren, Abraham L., 2015. "Robust exclusion and market division through loyalty discounts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 111-121.
    3. Aydinliyim, Tolga & Pangburn, Michael S. & Rabinovich, Elliot, 2017. "Inventory disclosure in online retailing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(1), pages 195-204.
    4. Granero, Lluís M., 2013. "Most-favored-customer pricing, product variety, and welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(3), pages 579-582.
    5. Trost, Michael, 2022. "Unraveling the spreading pattern of collusively effective competition clauses," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 01-2022, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    6. Aleksandr Yankelevich & Brady Vaughan, 2016. "Price‐Match Announcements in a Consumer Search Duopoly," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(4), pages 1186-1211, April.
    7. Bottasso, Anna & Marocco, Paolo & Robbiano, Simone, 2020. "Price matching and platform pricing," MPRA Paper 104811, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Sun, Yanhong & Sheng, Yiyun & Yan, Shuai & Zhang, Wei, 2023. "Pricing strategies in reward-based crowdfunding: Whether to introduce price guarantee?," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    9. Trost, Michael, 2021. "The collusive efficacy of competition clauses in Bertrand Markets with capacity-constrained retailers," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 04-2021, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    10. Constantinou, Evangelos & Bernhardt, Dan, 2018. "The price-matching dilemma," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 97-113.

    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. 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.
    2. Mago, Shakun Datta & Pate, Jennifer G., 2009. "An experimental examination of competitor-based price matching guarantees," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 342-360, May.
    3. Trost, Michael, 2022. "Unraveling the spreading pattern of collusively effective competition clauses," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 01-2022, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    4. Arbatskaya, Maria & Hviid, Morten & Shaffer, Greg, 2006. "On the use of low-price guarantees to discourage price cutting," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1139-1156, November.
    5. Trost, Michael, 2021. "The collusive efficacy of competition clauses in Bertrand Markets with capacity-constrained retailers," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 04-2021, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    6. Kim, Byung-Cheol & Ahmed, Mishal, 2020. "Price-match guarantees and investment incentives," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    7. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 2012. "Optimal low-price guarantees with anchoring," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 393-417, December.
    8. 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.
    9. Pio Baake & Ulrich Schwalbe, 2013. "Price Guarantees, Consumer Search, and Hassle Costs," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1335, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    10. Subhasish Dugar & Todd Sorensen, 2006. "Hassle Costs, Price-Matching Guarantees and Price Competition: An Experiment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 28(4), pages 359-378, June.
    11. Anne T. Coughlan & Greg Shaffer, 2009. "—Price-Matching Guarantees, Retail Competition, and Product-Line Assortment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(3), pages 580-588, 05-06.
    12. Juncai Jiang & Nanda Kumar & Brian T. Ratchford, 2017. "Price-Matching Guarantees with Endogenous Consumer Search," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3489-3513, October.
    13. Enrique Fatás & Nikolaos Georgantz & Juan A. Máñez & Gerardo Sabater, 2013. "Experimental duopolies under price guarantees," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 15-35, January.
    14. Samir Mamadehussene, 2021. "Measuring the competition effects of price-matching guarantees," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 261-287, December.
    15. Andreas Pollak, 2017. "Do Price-Matching Guarantees with Markups Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Theory and Experiment," Working Paper Series in Economics 93, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    16. Janssen, Maarten C.W. & Parakhonyak, Alexei, 2013. "Price matching guarantees and consumer search," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-11.
    17. Bottasso, Anna & Marocco, Paolo & Robbiano, Simone, 2020. "Price matching and platform pricing," MPRA Paper 104811, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Subhasish Dugar, 2007. "Price-Matching Guarantees and Equilibrium Selection in a Homogenous Product Market: An Experimental Study," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 30(2), pages 107-119, March.
    19. Yuan, Hong & Krishna, Aradhna, 2011. "Price-Matching Guarantees with Endogenous Search: A Market Experiment Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 182-193.
    20. Arbatskaya, Maria, 2001. "Can low-price guarantees deter entry?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(9), pages 1387-1406, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    facilitating practices; low-price guarantees; antitrust policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ccp:wpaper:wp08-26. 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: Cheryl Whittkaer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ccueauk.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.