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Customers and Retail Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Liran Einav
  • Peter J. Klenow
  • Jonathan D. Levin
  • Raviv Murciano-Goroff

Abstract

Using Visa debit and credit card transactions in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019, we document the importance of customers in accounting for sales variation across merchants, across stores within retail chains, and over time for individual merchants and stores. Customers, as opposed to transactions per customer or dollar sales per transaction, consistently account for about 80% of sales variation. The top 1% of growing and shrinking merchants account for about 70% of customer and sales reallocation in a given year. In order to illustrate some of the potential implications, we write down an endogenous growth model with and without the customer margin. In the context of this model, we find that the customer margin dramatically increases the size and growth contribution of the largest firms, but lowers the aggregate growth rate by diverting resources from research to customer acquisition activities.

Suggested Citation

  • Liran Einav & Peter J. Klenow & Jonathan D. Levin & Raviv Murciano-Goroff, 2021. "Customers and Retail Growth," NBER Working Papers 29561, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29561
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    Cited by:

    1. Friberg, Richard & Halseth, Emil M. Strøm & Frode, Steen & Ulsaker, Simen A., 2022. "The effect of cross-border shopping on commodity tax revenue: Results from a natural experiment," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 9/2022, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    2. Chun, Hyunbae & Kwon, Eunjee & Yang, Dongyun, 2024. "The rise of e-commerce and generational consumption inequality: Evidence from COVID-19 in South Korea," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

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