http://www.dhruvgrewal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2009-JR-CustomerExperienceManagement.pdf

Customer Experience Management in Retailing: An Organizing Framework

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex post market power – over the same buyer in the case of switching costs (or brand loyalty), or over others with network effects. Firms compete ex ante for this ex post power, using penetration pricing, introductory offers, and price wars. Such “competition for the market” or “life-cycle competition” can adequately replace ordinary compatible competition, and can even be fiercer than compatible competition by weakening differentiation. More often, however, incompatible competition not only involves direct efficiency losses but also softens competition and magnifies incumbency advantages. With network effects, established firms have little incentive to offer better deals when buyers' and complementors' expectations hinge on non-efficiency factors (especially history such as past market shares), and although competition between incompatible networks is initially unstable and sensitive to competitive offers and random events, it later “tips” to monopoly, after which entry is hard, often even too hard given incompatibility. And while switching costs can encourage small-scale entry, they discourage sellers from raiding one another's existing customers, and so also discourage more aggressive entry. Because of these competitive effects, even inefficient incompatible competition is often more profitable than compatible competition, especially for dominant firms with installed-base or expectational advantages. Thus firms probably seek incompatibility too often. We therefore favor thoughtfully pro-compatibility public policy.

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Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects

Bundling is pervasive in today's markets. However, the bundling literature contains inconsistencies in the use of terms and ambiguity about basic principles underlying the phenomenon. The literature also lacks an encompassing classification of the various strategies, clear rules to evaluate the legality of each strategy, and a unifying tramework to indicate when each is optimal. Based on a review of the marketing, economics, and law literature, this article develops a new synthesis of the field of bundling, which provides three important benetits. First, the article clearly and consistently defines bundling terms and identifies two key dimensions that enable a comprehensive classitication of bundling strategies. Second, it formulates clear rules for evaluating the legality of each of these strategies. Third, it proposes a framework of 12 propositions that suggest which bundling strategy is optimal in various contexts. The synthesis provides managers with a framework with which to understand and choose bundling strategies. It also provides researchers with promising avenues for further research.

Strategic Bundling of Products and Prices: A New Synthesis for Marketing

Bundling is pervasive in today’s markets. However, the bundling literature contains inconsistencies in the use of terms and ambiguity about basic principles underlying the phenomenon. The literature also lacks an encompassing classification of the various strategies, clear rules to evaluate the legality of each strategy, and a unifying framework to indicate when each is optimal. Based on a review of the marketing, economics, and law literature, this article develops a new synthesis of the field of bundling, which provides three important benefits. First, the article clearly and consistently defines bundling terms and identifies two key dimensions that enable a comprehensive classification of bundling strategies. Second, it formulates clear rules for evaluating the legality of each of these strategies. Third, it proposes a framework of 12 propositions that suggest which bundling strategy is optimal in various contexts. The synthesis provides managers with a framework with which to understand and c...

This chapter surveys the developments in price discrimination theory as it applies to imperfectly competitive markets. Broad themes and conclusions are discussed in the areas of first-, second- and third-degree price discrimination, pricing under demand uncertainty, bundling and behavior-based discrimination.

Chapter 34 Price Discrimination and Competition

Why firms may prefer not to price discriminate via mixed bundling

We consider the case of a duopoly selling perfect substitutes except for their level of capacity. Firms are playing a two-stage game in which they take capacities as given when they play in prices and anticipate the price outcome when they play in capacities. We analyze the case where consumers are homogeneous and where they are differentiated in their willingness to pay to avoid congestion.

Congestion and Game in Capacity: a Duopoly Analysis in the Presence of Network Externalities

There is a strong economic rationale for close cooperation between the public and private sectors. This has resulted in a significant increase in the demand for the provision of public services through instruments combining public and private money such as public-private partnerships (PPPs or P3s). We describe these arrangements and explore how they can be analyzed using standard tools in economics (incentives and principal-agent theory). We discuss the implications of our approach in terms of identifying risks that are often overlooked before turining to the optimal risk-sharing between the public and private partners, in particular with respect to information asymmetries in risk perceptions. This allows us to propose a typology of the risks associated with PPPs, where both internal risks (the risks associated with the contract) and external risks (those associated with the project) are considered.

Towards a Principal-Agent Based Typology of Risks in Public-Private Partnerships

The optimal product mix for a monopolist in the presence of congestion effects: A model and some results

This paper examines the role and impact of taxation on sustainable forest management It is shown that fiscal instruments neither reinforce nor substitute for traditional regulatory approaches Far from encouraging more sustainable forest management, fiscal instruments such as an inappropriate tax policy can actually undermine it The paper uses the arguments at the root of the Faustmann solution to draw conclusions on the incentives for sustainable tropical forest exploitation The paper also proposes a bond mechanism as an alternative market-based instrument to encourage sustainable forest logging while reducing monitoring costs

Luc Leruth

Papers

Why firms may prefer not to price discriminate via mixed bundling

Congestion and Game in Capacity: a Duopoly Analysis in the Presence of Network Externalities

Towards a Principal-Agent Based Typology of Risks in Public-Private Partnerships

The optimal product mix for a monopolist in the presence of congestion effects: A model and some results

The Complier Pays Principle: The Limits of Fiscal Approaches Toward Sustainable Forest Management