Asymmetric pricing is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We articulate, and provide empirical support for, a theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. In particular, we show how wholesale prices may be asymmetric in the small but symmetric in the large, when retailers face costs of price adjustments. Such retailers will not adjust prices for small changes in t...

I model strategic interaction between issuers, underwriters, retail investors, and institutional investors when the secondary market has limited price transparency. Search costs for retail investors lead to price dispersion in the secondary market, while the price for institutional investors is infinitely elastic. Because retail distribution capacity is assumed to be limited for each underwrite...

The hypothesis that price discrimination exploiting the consumer's willingness to pay for quality can occur in multi-firm industries is confirmed using microdata on retail gasoline prices. A test based on the price differentials at stations providing only one service quality (full or self service) and stations providing both qualities is developed and implemented with controls for variations in...

In this paper we develop a model of Bertrand price competition with uncertainty as to the number of bidders. The auction models predict retail price dispersion as an observable feature of price discrimination. The implications of the auction models are tested using a logit model on primary data. Some simulations of the logit model further enrich and capture critical states of chain-store rivalr...

Trade promotions are temporary price cuts that manufacturers offer retailers to encourage them to reduce retail prices. While trade promotion spending as a percentage of marketing budget has increased dramatically, the inefficiency of trade promotion represents the ‘‘number-one concern’’ among manufacturers, as indicated by recent trade surveys. At the heart of this dissatisfaction lies manufac...

Purpose – This paper explores the applied context of grocery retail pricing practice to understand how pricing executives approach ‘regular price’ decision-making (as opposed to promotional pricing). The study seeks to inductively develop a model of regular price decision-making in grocery retailing. Methodology – The research employs an inductive methodology involving interviews with pricing e...

For over 20 years, researchers in marketing have investigated factors that influence price sensitivity. There is extensive variation in price and promotion sensitivities at all levels of aggregation. Recent empirical work, enabled by advances in data collection and statistical methodology, has advanced our understanding of variation in consumer response to price promotions. Such variation in pa...

We investigate the strategic incentives for partial vertical integration, namely, partial ownership agreements between manufacturers and retailers, when the retailers privately know their costs and engage in differentiated good price competition. The partial misalignment between the profit objectives within a partially integrated manufacturer-retailer hierarchy entails a higher retail price tha...

Use of disappearance data as proxies for actual consumption causes inconsistent estimates of own-price retail demand elasticities. A system of equations describing consumer, processor, and producer behavior is used to consistently estimate the retail demand elasticity for beef using available data while avoiding the restrictive assumption of fixed input proportions implicit in disappearance dat...