IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/23103.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Relative and Absolute Preference for Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Angyridis, Constantine
  • Sen, Debapriya

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain two related phenomena: (i) it is often the case that when the new variety of a product is launched, some consumers do not purchase the latest variety and (ii) the quality of the latest variety of a product is often not significantly superior compared to the existing variety. We consider a simple model of monopoly with two types of consumers: "regular" (type R) who cares only about the absolute quality of the product and "fastidious" (type F) who cares about the relative quality vis-a-vis the existing variety. We show that it is never optimal for the monopolist to exclusively serve type F. Moreover, we identify situations where although it is optimal for the monopolist to upgrade the quality of the product, this upgrade is not sufficient to meet the standards of type F. As a result, only type R buys the upgraded variety while type F chooses not to buy it.

Suggested Citation

  • Angyridis, Constantine & Sen, Debapriya, 2010. "Relative and Absolute Preference for Quality," MPRA Paper 23103, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:23103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/23103/1/MPRA_paper_23103.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. White, Lawrence J, 1977. "Market Structure and Product Varieties," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 179-182, March.
    2. A. Michael Spence, 1975. "Monopoly, Quality, and Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(2), pages 417-429, Autumn.
    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. Crampes, Claude & Hollander, Abraham, 1995. "Duopoly and quality standards," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 71-82, January.
    2. Laurent d'Ursel, 1983. "Politiques de « non-prix » : Equilibre et optimum," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 34(6), pages 1057-1088.
    3. Sällström, Susanna, 2009. "Functional Differentiation," CEPR Discussion Papers 7187, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Kang Hua Cao & Betty Krier & Chia-Mei Liu & Brian McNamara & Jerrod Sharpe, 2017. "The Nonlinear Effects of Market Structure on Service Quality: Evidence from the U.S. Airline Industry," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(1), pages 43-73, August.
    5. Etienne Billette de Villemeur & Kevin Guittet, 2004. "Optimal structure of air transport services when environnemental costs are taken into account," Post-Print hal-01022242, HAL.
    6. Anna Nagurney & Dong Li, 2014. "Equilibria and dynamics of supply chain network competition with information asymmetry in quality and minimum quality standards," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 285-315, July.
    7. Kind, Hans Jarle & Koethenbuerger, Marko & Schjelderup, Guttorm, 2008. "Efficiency enhancing taxation in two-sided markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1531-1539, June.
    8. Mukherjee, Arka & Carvalho, Margarida, 2021. "Dynamic decision making in a mixed market under cooperation: Towards sustainability," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    9. Arora, Ashish & Forman, Chris & Nandkumar, Anand & Telang, Rahul, 2010. "Competition and patching of security vulnerabilities: An empirical analysis," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 164-177, May.
    10. Lohmann, Gui & Trischler, Jakob, 2017. "Licence to build, licence to charge? Market power, pricing and the financing of airport infrastructure development in Australia," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 28-37.
    11. John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte & William Sexton & Lars Vilhuber, 2019. "Suboptimal Provision of Privacy and Statistical Accuracy When They are Public Goods," Papers 1906.09353, arXiv.org.
    12. A. Yeşim Orhun & Sriram Venkataraman & Pradeep K. Chintagunta, 2016. "Impact of Competition on Product Decisions: Movie Choices of Exhibitors," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(1), pages 73-92, January.
    13. Rey, Patrick & Salant, David, 2012. "Abuse of dominance and licensing of intellectual property," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 518-527.
    14. Joseph Farrell & Michael L. Katz, 2000. "Innovation, Rent Extraction, and Integration in Systems Markets," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 413-432, December.
    15. Martin Gaynor, "undated". "What Do We Know About Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets?," GSIA Working Papers 2006-E62, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    16. Tor Iversen & Ching-to Ma, 2011. "Market conditions and general practitioners’ referrals," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 245-265, December.
    17. Veiga, André, 2018. "A note on how to sell a network good," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 114-126.
    18. Picard, Pierre M. & Okubo, Toshihiro, 2012. "Firms' locations under demand heterogeneity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 961-974.
    19. Jie Bai, 2016. "Melons as Lemons: Asymmetric Information, Consumer Learning and Seller Reputation," Natural Field Experiments 00540, The Field Experiments Website.
    20. Chen, You-hua & Chen, Liu-man & Mishra, Ashok K., 2021. "Information, Capacity Constraints and Quality on Firms Competition," 2021 ASAE 10th International Conference (Virtual), January 11-13, Beijing, China 329427, Asian Society of Agricultural Economists (ASAE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Relative Preference; Absolute Preference; Singular Menu; Separating Menu;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:23103. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.