Strategic Obfuscation and Retail Pricing
نویسندگان
چکیده
Retailers often stock items that are only slightly di¤erentiated from othersdi¤erent sizes of a popular brand, or di¤erent avors in a common product line for instance. We argue that this practice is a form of strategic obfuscation, intended to raise consumer search costs, and margins on non-comparable products. We test our hypothesis using examples from several product categories in German and French retail scanner data. We nd that, after controlling for other explanations for how margins can vary with package size, we cannot rule out strategic obfuscation as a feature of our retail sales data. keywords: di¤erentiation, price discrimination, retail pricing, search model, strategic obfuscation JEL Codes: D43, L13, M31 Richards is Professor and Morrison Chair of Agribusiness, Morrison School of Agribusiness, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University; Klein is Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany; Bonnet and Bouamra-Mechemache are Researchers in the Toulouse School of Economics and INRA, Toulouse, France. Contact author: Richards, Address: 7231 E Sonoran Arroyo Mall, Mesa, AZ, 85212. Ph. 480-727-1488, email: [email protected] 2016. Users may copy with permission. Financial support from INRA, GREMAQ, and the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative (NIFA, USDA) is gratefully acknowledged.
منابع مشابه
The Benefits of Downstream Information Acquisition
T study investigates the effects of turning terabytes of raw retail data into managerial insights (i.e., downstream information acquisition) in a strategic channel setting. Two effects of information acquisition are identified—the efficiency effect that improves retail pricing decision making in an uncertain environment, and the strategic effect whereby the retailer voluntarily discloses the ac...
متن کاملRetail Channel Structure Impact on Strategic Engineering Product Design
W examine, in a strategic setting, the broad issue of how retail channel structures—retail monopoly versus retail duopoly—impact a manufacturer’s optimal new product design, both in terms of engineering design specifications as well as manufacturer and retailer profits. Our strategic framework enables manufacturers in specific contexts to anticipate the reactions of the retailers and competitiv...
متن کاملDo Private Labels Increase Retailer Bargaining Power?
Like any new product, private label entry increases competition within a category leading to downward pressure on both wholesale and retail prices. But, given the higher margins for private labels and potential bargaining benefits for retailers, they have incentives to help private labels gain market share. The paper addresses two questions: First, do private labels enhance a retailer's bargain...
متن کاملUnderstanding the Determinants of Retail Strategy: An Empirical Analysis
Two powerful, highly effective strategic tools that retailers possess involve pricing and store format decisions. From the several strategic choices vailable for each decision, a retailer can choose any combination. We focus on two gaps in the literature. First, both decisions are specific to the onsumers to whom the stores cater and the environments within which they operate, yet little academ...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2016