IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/607.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The role of consumers in competition and competition policy

Author

Listed:
  • Waterson, Michael

Abstract

This paper develops the idea that consumers’ behavior matters significantly from the viewpoint of industry performance. This is examined through some theoretical propositions, but then at greater length by means of some case study examples. These examples demonstrate how, even in potentially competitive industries, reluctance on the part of consumers to search or to switch suppliers can lead to a sub-competitive outcome. The significance of non-traditional competition policy remedies in changing the outcome is drawn out.

Suggested Citation

  • Waterson, Michael, 2001. "The role of consumers in competition and competition policy," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 607, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:607
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2008/twerp607.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven Salop & Joseph Stiglitz, 1977. "Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 493-510.
    2. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1989. "Noncooperative game theory for industrial organization: An introduction and overview," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 259-327, Elsevier.
    3. Paul Klemperer, 1995. "Competition when Consumers have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 515-539.
    4. repec:bla:jindec:v:45:y:1997:i:4:p:429-43 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2006. "Advertising Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 93-113, March.
    6. Waterson, Michael, 2003. "Consumers and Competition," Economic Research Papers 269563, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    7. Simon P. Anderson & Regis Renault, 1999. "Pricing, Product Diversity, and Search Costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 719-735, Winter.
    8. John G. Lynch , Jr. & Dan Ariely, 2000. "Wine Online: Search Costs Affect Competition on Price, Quality, and Distribution," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 83-103, April.
    9. Johan Stennek, 1997. "Coordination in Oligopoly," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 99(4), pages 541-554, December.
    10. Svend Albæk & Peter Møllgaard & Per B. Overgaard, 1997. "Government‐Assisted Oligopoly Coordination? A Concrete Case," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(4), pages 429-443, December.
    11. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    12. Moshkin, N. & Shachar, R., 2000. "Switching Costs or Search Costs?," Papers 3-2000, Tel Aviv.
    13. Stahl, Dale O, II, 1989. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Sequential Consumer Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 700-712, September.
    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. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    2. Fishman, Arthur, 2021. "Finitely repeated search and the diamond paradox," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    3. Moraga-González, José L. & Sándor, Zsolt & Wildenbeest, Matthijs R., 2014. "Prices, Product Differentiation, And Heterogeneous Search Costs," IESE Research Papers D/1097, IESE Business School.
    4. Gamp, Tobias & Krähmer, Daniel, 2022. "Biased Beliefs in Search Markets," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 365, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    5. Benjamin Lester, 2011. "Information and Prices with Capacity Constraints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1591-1600, June.
    6. Itai Ater & Oren Rigbi, 2018. "The Effects of Mandatory Disclosure of Supermarket Prices," CESifo Working Paper Series 6942, CESifo.
    7. Obradovits, Martin, 2017. "Search and segregation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 137-165.
    8. Ireland, Norman & Waterson, Michael, 2006. "Cartels and Search," Economic Research Papers 269740, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    9. Alexei Parakhonyak & Anton Sobolev, 2015. "Non‐Reservation Price Equilibrium and Search without Priors," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(584), pages 887-909, May.
    10. Honka, Elisabeth & Seiler, Stephan & Ursu, Raluca, 2024. "Consumer search: What can we learn from pre-purchase data?," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 114-129.
    11. Fershtman, Chaim & Fishman, Arthur & Zhou, Jidong, 2018. "Search and categorization," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 225-254.
    12. Kuksov, Dmitri, 2006. "Search, common knowledge, and competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 95-108, September.
    13. Dutta, Champa Bati & Das, Debasish Kumar, 2017. "What drives consumers' online information search behavior? Evidence from England," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 36-45.
    14. T. Tony Ke & Song Lin, 2020. "Informational Complementarity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(8), pages 3699-3716, August.
    15. Wilson, Chris M., 2012. "Market frictions: A unified model of search costs and switching costs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1070-1086.
    16. Rigbi, Oren, 2017. "The Effects of Mandatory Disclosure of Supermarket Prices," CEPR Discussion Papers 12381, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Obradovits, Martin, 2015. "Going to the Discounter: Consumer Search with Local Market Heterogeneities," MPRA Paper 66613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Lommerud, Kjell Erik & Sorgard, Lars, 2003. "Entry in telecommunication: customer loyalty, price sensitivity and access prices," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 55-72, March.
    19. Atabek Atayev, 2021. "Nonlinear Prices, Homogeneous Goods, Search," Papers 2109.15198, arXiv.org.
    20. Alexandre de Corniere, 2013. "Search Advertising," Economics Series Working Papers 649, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    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:wrk:warwec:607. 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: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.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.