IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trr/wpaper/201405.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Markets with Technological Progress: Pricing, Quality, and Novelty

Author

Listed:
  • Ludwig von Auer
  • Mark Trede

Abstract

New and old products differ in two respects: quality and newness. Whereas a higher quality of a new product always benefits consumers, the newness itself benefits some consumers, but not others, and for some, it is even a disadvantage. We capture these features in a Hotelling model of OverLapping Innovators (HOLI model), entailing a sequence of static Hotelling games of horizontal product differentiation (newness), that we extend by vertical product differentiation (quality). In this model, the firms compete on quality and price. Using advanced dynamic hedonic regression methods, we empirically investigate the pricing policy of firms in the German laser printer market. We show that their pricing corresponds to our model with the seller of the new product acting as the Stackelberg follower.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludwig von Auer & Mark Trede, 2014. "Markets with Technological Progress: Pricing, Quality, and Novelty," Research Papers in Economics 2014-05, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:trr:wpaper:201405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/prof/VWL/EWF/Research_Papers/2014-05.pdf
    File Function: Second version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ludwig von Auer & Mark Trede, 2018. "Markets with technological progress: pricing, quality, and novelty," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 124(2), pages 121-137, June.
    2. L von Auer & M Trede, 2012. "The dynamics of brand equity: a hedonic regression approach to the laser printer market," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 63(10), pages 1351-1362, October.
    3. Gabszewicz, Jean J. & Resende, Joana, 2012. "Differentiated credence goods and price competition," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 277-287.
    4. Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1996. "Horizontal and vertical differentiation: The Launhardt model," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 485-506, June.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Juuso Valimaki, 1997. "Market Diffusion with Two-Sided Learning," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 773-795, Winter.
    6. Anderson, Simon, 1987. "Spatial competition and price leadership," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 369-398.
    7. Irmen, Andreas & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1998. "Competition in Multi-characteristics Spaces: Hotelling Was Almost Right," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 76-102, January.
    8. Triplett, Jack E, 1969. "Automobiles and Hedonic Quality Measurement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(3), pages 408-417, May/June.
    9. 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.
    10. Luca Lambertini, 2006. "The Economics of Vertically Differentiated Markets," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 4224.
    11. Ariel Pakes, 2003. "A Reconsideration of Hedonic Price Indexes with an Application to PC's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1578-1596, December.
    12. Peter M. Noble & Thomas S. Gruca, 1999. "Industrial Pricing: Theory and Managerial Practice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 435-454.
    13. Ernst R. Berndt & Neal J. Rappaport, 2001. "Price and Quality of Desktop and Mobile Personal Computers: A Quarter-Century Historical Overview," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 268-273, May.
    14. 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.
    15. Peter M. Noble & Thomas S. Gruca, 1999. "Response to the Comments on “Industrial Pricing: Theory and Managerial Practice”," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 458-459.
    16. Dan Levin & James Peck & Lixin Ye, 2009. "Quality Disclosure And Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 167-196, March.
    17. Ludwig Auer, 2007. "Hedonic price measurement: the CCC approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 289-311, September.
    18. Nelson, Randy A & Tanguay, Tim L & Patterson, Christopher D, 1994. "A Quality-Adjusted Price Index for Personal Computers," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(1), pages 23-31, January.
    19. Jonathan H Hamilton & James F. Klein & Eytan Sheshinski & Steven M. Slutsky, 1994. "Quantity Competition in a Spatial Model," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 27(4), pages 903-917, November.
    20. Frederick V. Waugh, 1928. "Quality Factors Influencing Vegetable Prices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 10(2), pages 185-196.
    21. Neven, D. & Thisse, J-F., 1989. "On Quality And Variety Competition," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1989020, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    22. Deltas, George & Zacharias, Eleftherios, 2006. "Entry order and pricing over the product cycle: The transition from the 486 to the Pentium processor," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 1041-1069, 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. Ludwig von Auer & Mark Trede, 2018. "Markets with technological progress: pricing, quality, and novelty," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 124(2), pages 121-137, June.

    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. Gabszewicz, Jean J. & Resende, Joana, 2012. "Differentiated credence goods and price competition," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 277-287.
    2. Paul Chwelos, 2003. "Approaches to performance measurement in hedonic analysis: Price indexes for laptop computers in the 1990's," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 199-224.
    3. Janssen, Maarten, 2017. "Regulating False Discloure," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168159, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Paul Windrum & Koen Frenken & Lawrence Green, 2017. "The importance of ergonomic design in product innovation. Lessons from the development of the portable computer," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 26(6), pages 953-971.
    5. Çağlayan Ebru & Arikan Eban, 2011. "Determinants of house prices in Istanbul: a quantile regression approach," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 305-317, February.
    6. Doms, Mark & Forman, Chris, 2005. "Prices for local area network equipment," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 365-388, July.
    7. Naoki Watanabe & Ryo Nakajima & Takanori Ida, 2010. "Quality-Adjusted Prices of Japanese Mobile Phone Handsets and Carriers’ Strategies," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 36(4), pages 391-412, June.
    8. L von Auer & M Trede, 2012. "The dynamics of brand equity: a hedonic regression approach to the laser printer market," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 63(10), pages 1351-1362, October.
    9. Martin Spann & Marc Fischer & Gerard J. Tellis, 2015. "Skimming or Penetration? Strategic Dynamic Pricing for New Products," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 235-249, March.
    10. P. Vanin, 2009. "Competition, Reputation and Cheating," Working Papers 683, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    11. Degryse, Hans & Irmen, Andreas, 2001. "Attribute dependence and the provision of quality," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 547-569, September.
    12. Vitor Miguel Ribeiro & João Correia-da-Silva & Joana Resende, 2016. "Nesting Vertical And Horizontal Differentiation In Two-Sided Markets," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(S1), pages 133-145, December.
    13. P. G. Garella & L. Lambertini, 2008. "Bidimensional quality competition and scope economies," Working Papers 653, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    14. Leonard J. Mirman & Marc Santugini, 2019. "The Informational Role of Prices," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(2), pages 606-629, April.
    15. Murthy, D.N.P. & Hagmark, P.-E. & Virtanen, S., 2009. "Product variety and reliability," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 94(10), pages 1601-1608.
    16. Cruijssen, F. & Borm, P.E.M. & Fleuren, H.A. & Hamers, H.J.M., 2005. "Insinking : A Methodology to Exploit Synergy in Transportation," Other publications TiSEM 958be918-e7b4-4e46-9cbe-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. G. Bertuzzi & L. Lambertini, 2001. "Advertising in a Differential Game of Spatial Competition," Working Papers 400, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    18. Wang, Kun & Xia, Wenyi & Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Qiong, 2018. "Effects of train speed on airline demand and price: Theory and empirical evidence from a natural experiment," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 99-130.
    19. Robert C. Feenstra & Christopher R. Knittel, 2009. "Reassessing the US Quality Adjustment to Computer Prices: The Role of Durability and Changing Software," NBER Chapters, in: Price Index Concepts and Measurement, pages 129-160, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Yinliang (Ricky) Tan & Janice E. Carrillo, 2017. "Strategic Analysis of the Agency Model for Digital Goods," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 26(4), pages 724-741, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hotelling; vertical product differentiation; hedonic regression; Stackelberg; laser printer;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L63 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Microelectronics; Computers; Communications Equipment
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    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:trr:wpaper:201405. 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: Matthias Neuenkirch (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/petride.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.