Price Competition in Multimarket Duopolies

In this article, we analyze the pricing strategies of firms that compete for the demand of an assortment of goods in a complete information static framework. In particular, we model the competition between two symmetric firms in a market that consists of two types of consumers, each of which may buy one unit of both goods sold by the two firms. We show that all Nash equilibria are such that neither firm charges the same price for both goods. Interestingly, under certain conditions, the firms jointly price discriminate between the two types of consumers and may even achieve the same level of profits as if they maximized joint profits; for another set of conditions, the unique equilibrium is such that the price for one of the goods and the price for the bundle are the same as the price of the good in a standard Hotelling model with one good. Finally, we show that if these equilibria exist, both firms prefer to sell both goods rather than specialize in either one of them. These results are a direct consequence of the interplay between the multimarket rivalry and the existence of more than one market segment, as modelled in this article.