IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v54y2008i10p1747-1758.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Make-or-Buy Decision in the Presence of a Rival: Strategic Outsourcing to a Common Supplier

Author

Listed:
  • Anil Arya

    (Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210)

  • Brian Mittendorf

    (School of Management, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520)

  • David E. M. Sappington

    (Department of Economics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611)

Abstract

Firms routinely decide whether to make essential inputs themselves or buy the inputs from independent suppliers. Conventional wisdom suggests that a firm will not buy an input for a price above its in-house cost of production. We show that this is not necessarily the case when a monopolistic input supplier also serves the firm's retail rival. In this case, the decision to buy the input (and thus become one of the supplier's customers) can limit the incentive the supplier would otherwise have to provide the input on particularly favorable terms to the retail rival. Thus, a retail competitor may pay a premium to outsource production to a common supplier in order to raise its rivals' costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Anil Arya & Brian Mittendorf & David E. M. Sappington, 2008. "The Make-or-Buy Decision in the Presence of a Rival: Strategic Outsourcing to a Common Supplier," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(10), pages 1747-1758, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:54:y:2008:i:10:p:1747-1758
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1080.0896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1080.0896
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.1080.0896?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. Buehler, Stefan & Haucap, Justus, 2006. "Strategic outsourcing revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 325-338, November.
    2. Demski, Js & Sappington, Dem, 1993. "Sourcing With Unverifiable Performance Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 1-20.
    3. S. Chan Choi, 1991. "Price Competition in a Channel Structure with a Common Retailer," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 271-296.
    4. Chen, Yongmin, 2001. "On Vertical Mergers and Their Competitive Effects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(4), pages 667-685, Winter.
    5. Michael A. Salinger, 1988. "Vertical Mergers and Market Foreclosure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(2), pages 345-356.
    6. Armstrong, Mark & Porter, Robert, 2007. "Preface to the Handbook of Industrial Organization, Volume 3," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 0, pages 00, Elsevier.
    7. Rey, Patrick & Tirole, Jean, 2007. "A Primer on Foreclosure," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 33, pages 2145-2220, Elsevier.
    8. Salop, Steven C & Scheffman, David T, 1987. "Cost-Raising Strategies," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 19-34, September.
    9. Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), 2007. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 1.
    10. Weidenbaum, Murray, 2005. "Outsourcing: Pros and cons," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 311-315.
    11. Long, Ngo Van, 2005. "Outsourcing and technology spillovers," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 297-304.
    12. Eunkyu Lee & Richard Staelin, 1997. "Vertical Strategic Interaction: Implications for Channel Pricing Strategy," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 185-207.
    13. Salop, Steven C & Scheffman, David T, 1983. "Raising Rivals' Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(2), pages 267-271, May.
    14. Arya, Anil & Mittendorf, Brian & Sappington, David E.M., 2008. "Outsourcing, vertical integration, and price vs. quantity competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-16, January.
    15. Yongmin Chen, 2005. "Vertical Disintegration," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 209-229, March.
    16. Gérard P. Cachon & Patrick T. Harker, 2002. "Competition and Outsourcing with Scale Economies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(10), pages 1314-1333, October.
    17. Alexander Schrader & Stephen Martin, 1998. "Vertical Market Participation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 13(3), pages 321-331, June.
    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.
    2. Bakaouka, Elpiniki & Milliou, Chrysovalantou, 2018. "Vertical licensing, input pricing, and entry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 66-96.
    3. Zanchettin, Piercarlo & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2017. "Vertical integration and product differentiation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 25-57.
    4. Normann, Hans-Theo, 2009. "Vertical integration, raising rivals' costs and upstream collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 461-480, May.
    5. Matsushima, Noriaki & Mizuno, Tomomichi, 2013. "Vertical separation as a defense against strong suppliers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(1), pages 208-216.
    6. Yutian Chen, 2011. "Strategic sourcing for entry deterrence and tacit collusion," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 102(2), pages 137-156, March.
    7. Donna, Javier D. & Pereira, Pedro & Trindade, Andre & Yoshida, Renan C., 2020. "Direct-to-Consumer Sales by Manufacturers and Bargaining," MPRA Paper 105773, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Kabiraj, Tarun & Sinha, Uday Bhanu, 2016. "Strategic outsourcing with technology transfer under price competition," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 281-290.
    9. Roberto Hernán González & Praveen Kujal, 2012. "Vertical integration, market foreclosure and quality investment," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 11(1), pages 1-20, April.
    10. Bo Liao & Candace A. Yano & Minakshi Trivedi, 2020. "Optimizing Store‐Brand Quality: Impact of Choice of Producer and Channel Price Leadership," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(1), pages 118-137, January.
    11. Inés Macho‐Stadler & Noriaki Matsushima & Ryusuke Shinohara, 2021. "Organizational Structure and Technological Investment," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(4), pages 785-816, December.
    12. Roy, Santanu & Viaene, Jean-Marie, 1998. "On strategic vertical foreign investment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 253-279, December.
    13. Zava Aydemir & Stefan Buehler, 2002. "Estimating Vertical Foreclosure in U.S. Gasoline Supply," SOI - Working Papers 0212, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    14. Upender Subramanian & Jagmohan S. Raju & Z. John Zhang, 2013. "Exclusive Handset Arrangements in the Wireless Industry: A Competitive Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 246-270, March.
    15. Bruno Jullien & Markus Reisinger & Patrick Rey, 2023. "Personalized Pricing and Distribution Strategies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1687-1702, March.
    16. Matsushima Noriaki & Mizuno Tomomichi, 2012. "Equilibrium Vertical Integration with Complementary Input Markets," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-32, June.
    17. Tarun Kabiraj & Uday Bhanu Sinha, 2011. "Strategic Outsourcing with Technology Transfer," Working papers 203, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    18. Chen, Yutian & Dubey, Pradeep & Sen, Debapriya, 2011. "Outsourcing induced by strategic competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 484-492, July.
    19. Inés Macho-Stadler & Noriaki Matsushima & Ryusuke Shinohara, 2019. "Organizational structure and technological investment," ISER Discussion Paper 1069r, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, revised Apr 2020.
    20. Choi, Jay Pil & Yi, Sang-Seung, 2016. "An equilibrium model of investment-reducing vertical integration," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(4), pages 659-676.

    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:inm:ormnsc:v:54:y:2008:i:10:p:1747-1758. 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.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.