Essays on price discrimination and price dispersion
This dissertation consists of three chapters on price discrimination. The first chapter, "Price discrimination through joint marketing", studies joint marketing arrangements by competing firms who engage in price discrimination between consumers who patronizeonly one firm (single purchasing) and those who purchase from both competitors (bundle purchasers). Two types of joint marketing are considered. Firms either commit to a component-price that applies to bundle-purchasers and then firms set stand-alone pricesfor single purchasers; or firms commit to a rebate off their stand alone price that will be applied to bundle-purchasers, and then firms set their stand alone prices. Both methods allow firms to raise prices and earn higher profits. However, the effect of price discrimination on social welfare depends on how prices are chosen. The rebate joint marketing scheme increases joint purchasing, whereas bundle pricing diminishes bundle purchases. So if the marginal social value of a bundle over a single purchase is large, the former increases total welfare. However, welfare can also increase with bundle pricing compared to non-discriminatory pricing.In the second chapter, "On the strategic choice of add-on pricing policies", we use an analytical model to examine the consequences of add-on pricing when firms are both horizontally and vertically differentiated and there is a segment of consumers who are unaware of the add-on fees at the time of initial purchase. We find that consumers who know about the add-on fees can be penalized by the existence of those who do not know. Our consideration of quality differences on base good and add-ons leads to several novelfindings regarding firm profits. We then explore the case in which sellers can decide to provide the complementary good for free. It is shown that there exist an incentive not to charge separate add-on fees that stems from differences in add-on profitability and that isdependent on parameter constellations whether a more profitable or a less profitable firm will want to bundle or not.In the last chapter, "Consumer search with price competition", we consider model of consumer search with differentiated products, where consumers can readily observe price and an observable characteristic, but have to incur search costs to learn about a hiddencharacteristic. In this set-up we find that equilibrium prices are decreasing in search costs. As search costs increase, it becomes more important for firms to attract consumers on their first visit, and hence they charge a lower price.
Read
- In Collections
-
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- In Copyright
- Material Type
-
Theses
- Authors
-
Jung, Yeonjei
- Thesis Advisors
-
Choi, Jay P.
- Committee Members
-
Jeitschko, Thomas D.
Davidson, Carl
Wildman, Steven
- Date Published
-
2014
- Program of Study
-
Economics - Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree Level
-
Doctoral
- Language
-
English
- Pages
- ix, 102 pages
- ISBN
-
9781303875281
1303875284
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/4wh2-4b86