IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/574.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bundling Revisited: Substitute Products and Inter-Firm Discounts

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Armstrong

Abstract

This paper extends the standard model of bundling to allow products to be substitutes and for products to be supplied by separate sellers. Whether integrated or separate, firms have an incentive to introduce a bundling discount when demand for the bundle is elastic relative to demand for stand-alone products. When products are partial substitutes, this typically gives an integrated firm a greater incentive to offer a bundle discount (relative to the standard model with additive preferences), while product substitutability is often the sole reason why separate sellers wish to offer inter-firm discounts. When separate sellers negotiate their inter-firm discount, they can use the discount to relax competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Armstrong, 2011. "Bundling Revisited: Substitute Products and Inter-Firm Discounts," Economics Series Working Papers 574, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:574
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:959f2e87-aa6a-46ba-95a0-764e4605149a
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Thanassoulis, 2007. "Competitive Mixed Bundling and Consumer Surplus," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 437-467, June.
    2. Kenneth S. Corts, 1998. "Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly: All-Out Competition and Strategic Commitment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 306-323, Summer.
    3. 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.
    4. Giacomo Calzolari & Vincenzo Denicol?, 2013. "Competition with Exclusive Contracts and Market-Share Discounts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2384-2411, October.
    5. Schmalensee, Richard, 1982. "Commodity Bundling by Single-Product Monopolies," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 67-71, April.
    6. Claudio Lucarelli & Sean Nicholson & Minjae Song, 2010. "Bundling Among Rivals: A Case of Pharmaceutical Cocktails," NBER Working Papers 16321, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Matthew Gentzkow, 2007. "Valuing New Goods in a Model with Complementarity: Online Newspapers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 713-744, June.
    8. Lewbel, Arthur, 1985. "Bundling of substitutes or complements," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 101-107, March.
    9. Tyner, Wally & Adams, John, 1976. "Rural Electrification In India: Biogas Versus Large Scale Power," 1976 Annual Meeting, August 15-18, State College, Pennsylvania 283822, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    10. Long, John B, Jr, 1984. "Comments on "Gaussian Demand and Commodity Bundling."," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(1), pages 235-246, January.
    11. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    12. R. Venkatesh & Wagner Kamakura, 2003. "Optimal Bundling and Pricing under a Monopoly: Contrasting Complements and Substitutes from Independently Valued Products," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(2), pages 211-232, April.
    13. Brueckner, Jan K., 2001. "The economics of international codesharing: an analysis of airline alliances," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(10), pages 1475-1498, December.
    14. Duarte Brito & Helder Vasconcelos, 2015. "Interfirm Bundling and Vertical Product Differentiation," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(1), pages 1-27, January.
    15. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan & Michael D. Whinston, 1989. "Multiproduct Monopoly, Commodity Bundling, and Correlation of Values," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 371-383.
    16. William James Adams & Janet L. Yellen, 1976. "Commodity Bundling and the Burden of Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(3), pages 475-498.
    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. Akifumi Ishihara & Noriyuki Yanagawa, 2013. "Dark Sides of Patent Pools with Compulsory Independent Licensing," CARF F-Series CARF-F-318, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    2. Sun, Yiqi & Wu, Zhengping & Zhu, Wanshan, 2022. "When do firms benefit from joint price and lead-time competition?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 302(2), pages 497-517.
    3. Correa, Alexander, 2020. "Empaquetamiento e incentivos para mejoras en calidad || Packaging and quality improvements," Revista de Métodos Cuantitativos para la Economía y la Empresa = Journal of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Administration, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Administration, vol. 30(1), pages 163-195, December.
    4. Guy Laroque & Nicola Pavoni, 2017. "Optimal taxation in occupational choice models: An Application to the Work Decisions of Couples," Working Papers hal-03915322, HAL.
    5. Neil Gandal & Sarit Markovich & Michael H. Riordan, 2018. "Ain't it “suite”? Bundling in the PC office software market," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(8), pages 2120-2151, August.

    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. Armstrong, Mark, 2013. "A more general theory of commodity bundling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 448-472.
    2. Mark Armstrong, 2016. "Nonlinear Pricing," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 583-614, October.
    3. Akifumi Ishihara & Noriyuki Yanagawa, 2013. "Dark Sides of Patent Pools with Compulsory Independent Licensing," CARF F-Series CARF-F-318, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    4. Zhou, Jidong, 2021. "Mixed bundling in oligopoly markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    5. Ahn Illtae & Yoon Kiho, 2012. "Competitive Mixed Bundling of Vertically Differentiated Products," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-54, November.
    6. Sang‐Hyun Kim & Jong‐Hee Hahn, 2022. "On the profitability of interfirm bundling in oligopolies," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 657-673, August.
    7. Andrea Mantovani, 2013. "The Strategic Effect of Bundling: A New Perspective," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 42(1), pages 25-43, February.
    8. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Yeonjei Jung & Jaesoo Kim, 2017. "Bundling and joint marketing by rival firms," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 571-589, September.
    9. Takanori Adachi & Takeshi Ebina & Makoto Hanazono, 2017. "Endogenous Product Boundary," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(1), pages 13-40, January.
    10. Amit Gayer & Avishay Aiche & Eli Gimmon, 2022. "Online sequential bundling: profit analysis and practice," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1351-1375, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Liangy, Julienne & Petulowa, Marc, 2012. "Mobile only users powered by fixed-mobile substitution," 23rd European Regional ITS Conference, Vienna 2012 60363, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    13. Jidong Zhou, 2017. "Competitive Bundling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 145-172, January.
    14. Takanori Adachi & Takeshi Ebina & Makoto Hanazono, 2011. "Option Package Bundling," KIER Working Papers 785, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    15. Matteo Alvisi & Emanuela Carbonara, 2020. "Cocktails done right: price competition and welfare when substitutes become complements," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 1-38, September.
    16. Shi, Guanming & Chavas, Jean-Paul & Stiegert, Kyle W., 2008. "An Analysis of Bundle Pricing: The Case of the Corn Seed Market," Staff Papers 92212, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    17. Terrence August & Duy Dao & Kihoon Kim, 2019. "Market Segmentation and Software Security: Pricing Patching Rights," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(10), pages 4575-4597, October.
    18. Rustam Ibragimov & Johan Walden, 2010. "Optimal Bundling Strategies Under Heavy-Tailed Valuations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(11), pages 1963-1976, November.
    19. Joao Macieira & Pedro Pereira & Joao Vareda, 2013. "Bundling Incentives in Markets with Product Complementarities: The Case of Triple-Play," Working Papers 13-15, NET Institute.
    20. Gayer, Amit & Shy, Oz, 2016. "A welfare evaluation of tying strategies," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 623-637.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bundling; Price discrimination; Oligopoly; Collusion;
    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
    • L42 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Vertical Restraints; Resale Price Maintenance; Quantity Discounts

    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:oxf:wpaper:574. 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.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.