IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ide/wpaper/27906.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Signaling quality in vertical relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Bontems, Philippe
  • Mahenc, Philippe

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of price signaling in a model of vertical relationship between a manufacturer and a retailer who share the same information about quality, unlike consumers who do not observe it a priori. We show that delegating the price setting task to a retailer and controlling it through a vertical contract (two-part tariff) helps drastically reduce the number of price signaling equilibria available to the retailer. The outcome of a unique price charged to consumers obtains without invoking the consumer sophistication usually required by selection criterions. The vertical contract turns to be the most e¢ cient way for the vertical chain to tie its hands on a unique ?nal price. This price may disclose or not information to consumers depending on their initial optimism about quality. We prove that there also exists circumstances where consumers prefer ex ante not to learn the true quality through price.

Suggested Citation

  • Bontems, Philippe & Mahenc, Philippe, 2014. "Signaling quality in vertical relationships," IDEI Working Papers 819, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    • Handle: RePEc:ide:wpaper:27906
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://idei.fr/sites/default/files/medias/doc/wp/2014/wp_idei_819.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Mark N. Hertzendorf & Per Baltzer Overgaard, 2001. "Price Competition and Advertising Signals: Signaling by Competing Senders," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(4), pages 621-662, December.
    3. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    4. Laurent Linnemer, 1998. "Entry Deterrence, Product Quality: Price and Advertising as Signals," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(4), pages 615-645, December.
    5. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2008. "Communicating quality: a unified model of disclosure and signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 973-989, December.
    6. Janssen, Maarten C.W. & Roy, Santanu, 2010. "Signaling quality through prices in an oligopoly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 192-207, January.
    7. Bagwell, Kyle & Riordan, Michael H, 1991. "High and Declining Prices Signal Product Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 224-239, March.
    8. Mahenc, Philippe, 2008. "Signaling the environmental performance of polluting products to green consumers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 59-68, January.
    9. Michael Spence, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(3), pages 355-374.
    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. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 2017. "Pricing an Experience Composite Good as Coordinated Signals," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(2), pages 163-182, March.
    2. Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2019. "The Informational Role of Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(2), pages 606-629, April.
    3. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2008. "Imperfect competition and quality signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(1), pages 163-183, March.
    4. Helmut Bester & Juri Demuth, 2015. "Signalling Rivalry and Quality Uncertainty in a Duopoly," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 135-154, June.
    5. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2005. "Secrecy and Safety," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1074-1091, September.
    6. P. Vanin, 2009. "Competition, Reputation and Cheating," Working Papers 683, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    7. Philippe Mahenc, 2017. "Honest versus Misleading Certification," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 454-483, June.
    8. Laurent Linnemer, 2011. "Caught In A Stranglehold? Advertising: What Else?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 79(1), pages 63-80, January.
    9. Minghua Chen & Konstantinos Serfes & Eleftherios Zacharias, 2023. "Prices as signals of product quality in a duopoly," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(1), pages 1-31, March.
    10. Daughety, Andrew F. & Reinganum, Jennifer F., 2007. "Competition and confidentiality: Signaling quality in a duopoly when there is universal private information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 94-120, January.
    11. Schmidbauer, Eric & Lubensky, Dmitry, 2018. "New and improved?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 26-48.
    12. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    13. Janssen, Maarten, 2017. "Regulating False Discloure," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168159, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Emons, Winand & Fluet, Claude, 2012. "Non-comparative versus comparative advertising of quality," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 352-360.
    15. P. Vanin, 2009. "Competition, Reputation and Compliance," Working Papers 682, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    16. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2008. "Non-comparative versus Comparative Advertising as a Quality Signal," Diskussionsschriften dp0805, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    17. Eric Schmidbauer, 2013. "New and Improved?," Working Papers 2013-01, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    18. Carroni, Elias & Mantovani, Andrea & Minniti, Antonio, 2023. "Price signaling with salient-thinking consumers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 238-253.
    19. Vaccari, Federico, 2021. "Competition in Signaling," MPRA Paper 106071, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Buehler, Benno & Schuett, Florian, 2014. "Certification and minimum quality standards when some consumers are uninformed," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 493-511.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    quality signalling; vertical relationship; information disclosure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    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:ide:wpaper:27906. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/idtlsfr.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.