IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v72y1996i219p359-369.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Search‐Theoretic Interpretation of Multi‐Outlet Retailers

Author

Listed:
  • DAVID PRENTICE
  • HUGH SIBLY

Abstract

Why do retailing firms operate several chains of stores, each of which is in apparent competition with the others? This paper demonstrates that by increasing the number of, apparently independent, stores it controls, a firm can discourage consumer search and increase its market power. It is also shown that an increased share of outlets controlled by a multi‐outlet firm allows both single‐outlet firms and the multi‐outlet firm to raise price and thereby increase profit. These results also imply that once the traditional one‐firm, one‐outlet assumption is relaxed, sequential search models may become unstable.

Suggested Citation

  • David Prentice & Hugh Sibly, 1996. "A Search‐Theoretic Interpretation of Multi‐Outlet Retailers," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 72(219), pages 359-369, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:72:y:1996:i:219:p:359-369
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4932.1996.tb00970.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1996.tb00970.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1996.tb00970.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 689-711, July/Aug..
    2. Asher Wolinsky, 1983. "Retail Trade Concentration Due to Consumers' Imperfect Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 275-282, Spring.
    3. Nelson, Phillip, 1970. "Information and Consumer Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(2), pages 311-329, March-Apr.
    4. Steven Salop, 1977. "The Noisy Monopolist: Imperfect Information, Price Dispersion and Price Discrimination," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 393-406.
    5. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    6. Rothschild, Michael, 1973. "Models of Market Organization with Imperfect Information: A Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(6), pages 1283-1308, Nov.-Dec..
    7. Rafael Rob, 1985. "Equilibrium Price Distributions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(3), pages 487-504.
    8. Dudey, Marc, 1990. "Competition by Choice: The Effect of Consumer Search on Firm Location Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1092-1104, December.
    9. Michael Rothschild, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown: A Summary," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 3, number 1, pages 293-294, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Stahl, Dale O, II, 1989. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Sequential Consumer Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 700-712, September.
    11. Raymond Deneckere & Carl Davidson, 1985. "Incentives to Form Coalitions with Bertrand Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(4), pages 473-486, Winter.
    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. Judy Taylor & Gary Magee, 2017. "In the Aftermath: Consumer Choice and the Deregulation of Australian Retail Banking, 1988–1993," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(2), pages 134-157, July.

    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. repec:bla:ecorec:v:72:y:1996:i:219:p:359-69 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Mariano Tappata, 2009. "Rockets and feathers: Understanding asymmetric pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(4), pages 673-687, December.
    3. Rauh, Michael T., 2009. "Strategic complementarities and search market equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 959-978, July.
    4. Konishi, Hideo & Sandfort, Michael T., 2002. "Expanding demand through price advertisement," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 965-994, September.
    5. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    6. Menzio, Guido & Trachter, Nicholas, 2015. "Equilibrium price dispersion with sequential search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 188-215.
    7. Maity, Moutusy & Dass, Mayukh & Malhotra, Naresh K., 2014. "The Antecedents and Moderators of Offline Information Search: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 233-254.
    8. José Tudón, 2021. "Can price dispersion be supported solely by information frictions?," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 9(1), pages 75-90, April.
    9. Andrew Rhodes & Jidong Zhou, 2019. "Consumer Search and Retail Market Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2607-2623, June.
    10. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    11. David, Israel, 1998. "Explicit results for a class of asset-selling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 576-584, November.
    12. Alexei Parakhonyak, 2014. "Oligopolistic Competition and Search Without Priors," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(576), pages 594-606, May.
    13. Rauh, Michael T., 1997. "A Model of Temporary Search Market Equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 128-153, November.
    14. Brannon, James I. & Gorman, Michael F., 2002. "The effects of information costs on search and convergence in experimental markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 375-390, April.
    15. Ralph-C Bayer & Changxia Ke, 2010. "Rockets and Feathers in the Laboratory," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2010-20, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    16. Xing Zhang & Tat Y. Chan & Ying Xie, 2018. "Price Search and Periodic Price Discounts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(2), pages 495-510, February.
    17. Darrell Duffie & Piotr Dworczak & Haoxiang Zhu, 2017. "Benchmarks in Search Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1983-2044, October.
    18. Robert J. Kauffman & Charles A. Wood, 2007. "Follow the leader: price change timing in Internet-based selling," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 679-700.
    19. Jochen Haller, 2002. "The Impact of Electronic Markets on B2B-Relationships," Industrial Organization 0204004, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Feb 2004.
    20. DeSarbo, Wayne S. & Choi, Jungwhan, 1998. "A latent structure double hurdle regression model for exploring heterogeneity in consumer search patterns," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1-2), pages 423-455, November.
    21. Timothy Sorenson, 1999. "Product Location with Foresight," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 14(3), pages 281-292, May.

    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:bla:ecorec:v:72:y:1996:i:219:p:359-369. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.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.