IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rae/wpaper/201712.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Spatial competition with demand uncertainty: A laboratory experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Aurélie Bonein
  • Stéphane Turolla

Abstract

Motivated by recent research on product differentiation, we conduct laboratory experiments to study how (aggregate) demand uncertainty influences location choices and price competition in the original Hotelling (1929)’s model. We provide new predictions on the effect of risk attitudes on both decisions under demand uncertainty and confront them with the data. Our experimental results support the predictions that demand uncertainty acts as a differentiation force for risk-neutral and risk-lover subjects. By contrast, we do not verify that demand uncertainty leads risk-averse subjects to agglomerate. This is explained primarily by learning effects and heterogeneous behaviors within this risk profile. Finally, we observe various price-setting behaviors, ranging from an attempt to collude to a price war, depending on the level of differentiation.

Suggested Citation

  • Aurélie Bonein & Stéphane Turolla, 2017. "Spatial competition with demand uncertainty: A laboratory experiment," Working Papers SMART 17-12, INRAE UMR SMART.
    • Handle: RePEc:rae:wpaper:201712
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266260/files/wp17-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Balvers, Ronald & Szerb, Lazlo, 1996. "Location in the Hotelling duopoly model with demand uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 1453-1461, August.
    2. Hiroshi Aiura, 2010. "“Signal-jamming” leads to “minimum differentiation” under demand uncertainty," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(2), pages 245-271, October.
    3. Schuetz, Jenny, 2015. "Why are Walmart and Target Next-Door neighbors?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 38-48.
    4. Elizalde, Javier, 2013. "Competition in multiple characteristics: An empirical test of location equilibrium," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 938-950.
    5. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    6. John D. Hey & Chris Orme, 2018. "Investigating Generalizations Of Expected Utility Theory Using Experimental Data," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Experiments in Economics Decision Making and Markets, chapter 3, pages 63-98, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Bonein, Aurélie & Turolla, Stéphane, 2009. "Sequential location under one-sided demand uncertainty," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 145-159, September.
    8. Steffen Huck & Wieland M¸ller, 2002. "The East End, the West End, and King's Cross: on Clustering in the Four-Player Hotelling Game," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(2), pages 231-240, April.
    9. Brown Kruse, Jamie & Schenk, David J., 2000. "Location, cooperation and communication: An experimental examination," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 59-80, January.
    10. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten Igel & Rutström, Elisabet E., 2010. "Behavioral econometrics for psychologists," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 553-576, August.
    11. Irmen, Andreas & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1998. "Competition in Multi-characteristics Spaces: Hotelling Was Almost Right," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 76-102, January.
    12. David B. Ridley, 2008. "Herding versus Hotelling: Market Entry with Costly Information," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 607-631, September.
    13. Brown-Kruse, Jamie & Cronshaw, Mark B & Schenk, David J, 1993. "Theory and Experiments on Spatial Competition," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 31(1), pages 139-165, January.
    14. Asplund, Marcus, 2002. "Risk-averse firms in oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 995-1012, September.
    15. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/1759 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    17. Aurélie Bonein & Stéphane Turolla, 2009. "Sequential location under one-sided demand uncertainty," Post-Print hal-02387376, HAL.
    18. Janet S. Netz & Beck A. Taylor, 2002. "Maximum Or Minimum Differentiation? Location Patterns Of Retail Outlets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 162-175, February.
    19. Kieron J. Meagher & Klaus G. Zauner, 2008. "Uncertainty in Spatial Duopoly with Possibly Asymmetric Distributions: a State Space Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 579, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    20. Steffen Andersen & Glenn Harrison & Morten Lau & E. Rutström, 2009. "Elicitation using multiple price list formats," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(3), pages 365-366, September.
    21. de Palma, A, et al, 1985. "The Principle of Minimum Differentiation Holds under Sufficient Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 767-781, July.
    22. d'Aspremont, C & Gabszewicz, Jean Jaskold & Thisse, J-F, 1979. "On Hotelling's "Stability in Competition"," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1145-1150, September.
    23. Collins, Richard & Sherstyuk, Katerina, 2000. "Spatial Competition with Three Firms: An Experimental Study," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 73-94, January.
    24. Economides, Nicholas, 1986. "Minimal and maximal product differentiation in Hotelling's duopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 67-71.
    25. Drichoutis, Andreas & Lusk, Jayson, 2012. "Risk preference elicitation without the confounding effect of probability weighting," MPRA Paper 37762, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    26. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    27. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    28. Cheng, Yi-Ling, 2014. "Vertical product differentiation under demand uncertainty," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 51-57.
    29. Kieron Meagher & Klaus Zauner, 2005. "Location-then-price competition with uncertain consumer tastes," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 25(4), pages 799-818, June.
    30. Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten I. & Elisabet Rutström, E., 2009. "Risk attitudes, randomization to treatment, and self-selection into experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 498-507, June.
    31. Picone, Gabriel A. & Ridley, David B. & Zandbergen, Paul A., 2009. "Distance decreases with differentiation: Strategic agglomeration by retailers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 463-473, May.
    32. Barreda-Tarrazona, Iván & García-Gallego, Aurora & Georgantzís, Nikolaos & Andaluz-Funcia, Joaquín & Gil-Sanz, Agustín, 2011. "An experiment on spatial competition with endogenous pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 74-83, January.
    33. Meagher, Kieron J. & Zauner, Klaus G., 2004. "Product differentiation and location decisions under demand uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 201-216, August.
    34. Meagher, Kieron J. & Zauner, Klaus G., 2011. "Uncertain spatial demand and price flexibility: A state space approach to duopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 26-28, October.
    35. Camacho-Cuena, Eva & Garcia-Gallego, Aurora & Georgantzis, Nikolaos & Sabater-Grande, Gerardo, 2005. "Buyer-seller interaction in experimental spatial markets," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 89-108, March.
    36. Orzen, Henrik & Sefton, Martin, 2008. "An experiment on spatial price competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 716-729, May.
    37. F. Javier Casado-Izaga, 2000. "Location decisions: The role of uncertainty about consumer tastes," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 71(1), pages 31-46, February.
    38. Eckert, Andrew & He, Zhen & West, Douglas S., 2013. "An empirical examination of clustering and dispersion within Canadian shopping centers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 625-633.
    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. Bonein, Aurélie & Turolla, Stéphane, 2009. "Sequential location under one-sided demand uncertainty," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 145-159, September.
    2. Barreda-Tarrazona, Iván & García-Gallego, Aurora & Georgantzís, Nikolaos & Andaluz-Funcia, Joaquín & Gil-Sanz, Agustín, 2011. "An experiment on spatial competition with endogenous pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 74-83, January.
    3. Dimitrios Xefteris & Iván Barreda‐Tarrazona & Aurora García‐Gallego & Nikolaos Georgantzís, 2023. "Catalog competition: Theory and experimental evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(1), pages 122-137, January.
    4. Jianhu Zhang & Changying Li, 2013. "Endogenous timing in a mixed oligopoly under demand uncertainty," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 273-289, April.
    5. Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Tanimura, Emily & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2019. "The Principle of Minimum Differentiation revisited: Return of the median voter," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 145-170.
    6. Manfred Stadler, 2019. "Location in a Disk City with Consumer Concentration Around the Center," Schmalenbach Business Review, Springer;Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft, vol. 71(1), pages 35-50, February.
    7. Krol Michal, 2011. "On the Existence and Social Optimality of Equilibria in a Hotelling Game with Uncertain Demand and Linear-Quadratic Costs," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Buechel, Berno & Klein, Jan, 2014. "Do Consumers' Preferences Really Matter? - A Note on Spatial Competition with Restricted Strategies," MPRA Paper 55288, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Dimitrios Xefteris & Iván Barreda-Tarrazona & Aurora García-Gallego & Nikolaos Georgantzis, 2018. "Catalog Competition: Equilibrium Characterization and experimental evidence," Working Papers 2018/08, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    10. Król, Michał, 2012. "Product differentiation decisions under ambiguous consumer demand and pessimistic expectations," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 593-604.
    11. Buechel, Berno & Roehl, Nils, 2015. "Robust equilibria in location games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(2), pages 505-517.
    12. Jan Potters & Sigrid Suetens, 2013. "Oligopoly Experiments In The Current Millennium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 439-460, July.
    13. Tamás Csermely & Alexander Rabas, 2016. "How to reveal people’s preferences: Comparing time consistency and predictive power of multiple price list risk elicitation methods," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 107-136, December.
    14. Zsolt Katona, 2015. "Democracy in product design: Consumer participation and differentiation strategies," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 359-394, December.
    15. Alventosa, Adriana & Pacheco Pires, Cesaltina & Ferreira Jorge, Sílvia & Pinho, Joana & Catalão-Lopes, Margarida, 2023. "How does firms’ cost structure affect their quality–price mix? An experimental analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    16. Zsolt Katona, 2015. "Democracy in product design: Consumer participation and differentiation strategies," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 359-394, December.
    17. Young Kwark & Jianqing Chen & Srinivasan Raghunathan, 2018. "User-Generated Content and Competing Firms’ Product Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4608-4628, October.
    18. Tomasz Kopczewski & Maciej Pogorzelski, 2009. "Influence of the size of the company on developing of decision-making process of the enterprise concerning the spatial location," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 23.
    19. Yang, Xiaodong & Cai, Gangshu (George) & Chen, Ying-Ju & Yang, Shu-Jung Sunny, 2017. "Competitive Retailer Strategies for New Market Research, Entry and Positioning Decisions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 172-186.
    20. Michal Król, 2009. "The role of demand uncertainty in the two stage Hotelling model," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0904, Economics, The University of Manchester.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    product differentiation; demand uncertainty; price competition; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General

    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:rae:wpaper:201712. 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: Anne Chauvel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inrarfr.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.