Showing papers on "Limit price published in 2011"

Wine Online: Search Costs and Competition on Price, Quality, and Distribution

Abstract: A fundamental dilemma confronts retailers with stand-alone sites on the World Wide Web and those attempting to build electronic malls for delivery via the Internet, online services, or interactive television Alba et al. 1997. For consumers, the main potential advantage of electronic shopping over other channels is a reduction in search costs for products and product-related information. Retailers, however, fear that such lowering of consumers' search costs will intensify competition and lower margins by expanding the scope of competition from local to national and international. Some retailers' electronic offerings have been constructed to thwart comparison shopping and to ward off price competition, dimming the appeal of many initial electronic shopping services. Ceteris paribus, if electronic shopping lowers the cost of acquiring price information, it should increase price sensitivity, just as is the case for price advertising. In a similar vein, though, electronic shopping can lower the cost of search for quality information. Most analyses ignore the offsetting potential of the latter effect to lower price sensitivity in the current period. They also ignore the potential of maximally transparent shopping systems to produce welfare gains that give consumers a long-term reason to give repeat business to electronic merchants cf. Alba et al. 1997, Bakos 1997. We test conditions under which lowered search costs should increase or decrease price sensitivity. We conducted an experiment in which we varied independently three different search costs via electronic shopping: search cost for price information, search cost for quality information within a given store, and search cost for comparing across two competing electronic wine stores. Consumers spent their own money purchasing wines from two competing electronic merchants selling some overlapping and some unique wines. We show four primary empirical results. First, for differentiated products like wines, lowering the cost of search for quality information reduced price sensitivity. Second, price sensitivity for wines common to both stores increased when cross-store comparison was made easy, as many analysts have assumed. However, easy cross-store comparison had no effect on price sensitivity for unique wines. Third, making information environments more transparent by lowering all three search costs produced welfare gains for consumers. They liked the shopping experience more, selected wines they liked more in subsequent tasting, and their retention probability was higher when they were contacted two months later and invited to continue using the electronic shopping service from home. Fourth, we examined the implications of these results for manufacturers and examined how market shares of wines sold by two stores or one were affected by search costs. When store comparison was difficult, results showed that the market share of common wines was proportional to share of distribution; but when store comparison was made easy, the market share returns to distribution decreased signi.cantly. All these results suggest incentives for retailers carrying differentiated goods to make information environments maximally transparent, but to avoid price competition by carrying more unique merchandise.

Do Residential Customers Respond to Hourly Prices? Evidence from a Dynamic Pricing Experiment

Abstract: This paper uses the results of a dynamic pricing experiment for households in the District of Columbia to determine whether the reduction in demand associated with an hourly price signal is economically different from the demand reduction associated with an equivalent price signal that is four times longer in duration. For both regular and all-electric customers, the percentage demand reduction associated with a given percentage increase in the hourly price is approximately equal to the percentage demand reduction associated with the same percentage price increase of a much longer duration.

Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Consumer Search: An Examination of the Retail Gasoline Market

Abstract: It has been documented that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases in wholesale price than to decreases. However, there is very little theoretical or empirical evidence identifying the market characteristics responsible for this behavior. This paper presents a new theoretical model of asymmetric adjustment that empirically matches observed retail gasoline price behavior better than previously suggested explanations. I develop a “reference price” consumer search model that assumes consumers’ expectations of prices are based on prices observed during previous purchases. The model predicts that consumers search less when prices are falling. This reduced search results in higher profit margins and a slower price response to cost changes than when margins are low and prices are increasing. Following the predictions of the theory, I use a panel of gas station prices to estimate the response pattern of prices to a change in costs. Unlike previous empirical studies I focus on how profit margins (in addition to the direction of the cost change) affect the speed of price response. Estimates are consistent with the predictions of the reference price search model, and appear to contradict previously suggested explanations of asymmetric adjustment.

E-commerce volume pricing

Abstract: In the volume pricing methodology, a seller initially establishes a price structure for a product which provides for lower prices as larger quantities of the product are purchased. The price structure is electronically made available to potential buyers of the product. For example, the price structure may be displayed on an Internet site. The sellers further establish an “open session” period during which orders for the product are accepted. During the open session period, multiple buyers are able to place orders for the product up to a maximum available quantity. At the end of the open session, the total quantity of products collectively ordered by all of the buyers is calculated. Based on the total quantity ordered, the final price to all buyers is the lowest price provided from the price structure regardless of whether the lowest price had been reached at the time a particular buyer placed their order during the open session.

Consumer Search and Dynamic Price Dispersion: An Application to Gasoline Markets

Abstract: This paper studies the role of imperfect information in explaining price dispersion. We use a new panel dataset on the U.S. retail gasoline industry, and propose a new test of temporal price dispersion to establish the importance of consumer search. We show that price rankings vary significantly over time; however, they are more stable among stations at the same street intersection. We establish the equilibrium relationships between price dispersion and key variables from consumer search models. Price dispersion increases with the number of firms in the market, decreases with the production cost and increases with search costs.

Price discrimination in E-commerce? an examination of dynamic pricing in name-your-own price markets

Abstract: The enhanced abilities of online retailers to learn about their customers' shopping behaviors have increased fears of dynamic pricing, a practice in which a seller sets prices based on the estimated buyer's willingness-to-pay. However, among online retailers, a deviation from a one-price-for-all policy is the exception. When price discrimination is observed, it is often in the context of customer outrage about unfair pricing. One setting where pricing varies is the name-your-own-price (NYOP) mechanism. In contrast to a typical retail setting, in NYOP markets, it is the buyer who places an initial offer. This offer is accepted if it is above some threshold price set by the seller. If the initial offer is rejected, the buyer can update her offer in subsequent rounds. By design, the final purchase price is opaque to the public; the price paid depends on the individual buyer's willingness-to-pay and offer strategy. Further, most forms of NYOP employ a fixed threshold price policy. In this paper, we compare a fixed threshold price setting with an adaptive threshold price setting. A seller who considers an adaptive threshold price has to weigh potentially greater profits against customer objections about the perceived fairness of such a policy. We first derive the optimal strategy for the seller. We analyze the effectiveness of an adaptive threshold price vis-a-vis a fixed threshold price on seller profit and customer satisfaction. Further, we evaluate the moderating effect of revealing the threshold price policy (adaptive versus fixed) to buyers. We test our model in a series of laboratory experiments and in a large field experiment at a prominent NYOP seller involving real purchases. Our results show that revealing the usage of an adaptive mechanism yields higher profits and more transactions than not revealing this information. In the field experiment, we find that applying a revealed adaptive threshold price can increase profits by over 20 percent without lowering customer satisfaction.

Influence of Price Responsive Demand Shifting Bidding on Congestion and LMP in Pool-Based Day-Ahead Electricity Markets

Abstract: This paper investigates the influence of price responsive demand shifting bidding on congestion and locational marginal prices in pool-based day-ahead electricity markets The market dispatch problem of the pool-based day-ahead electricity market is formulated as to maximize the social welfare of market participants subject to operational constraints given by real and reactive power balance equations, and security constraints in the form of apparent power flow limits over the congested lines The social welfare objective function of the day-ahead market dispatch problem maximizes the benefit of distribution companies and other bulk consumers based on their price responsive demand shifting bids and minimizes the real and reactive power generation cost of generation companies The price responsive demand shifting bidding mechanism, which has been recently introduced in the literature, is able to shift the price responsive demand from the periods of high price to the periods of low price in day-ahead electricity markets The comparisons of the price responsive demand shifting bids with conventional price responsive and price taking bids are presented by solving hourly market dispatch problems on five-bus, IEEE 30-bus, realistic UP 75-bus Indian, and IEEE 118-bus systems for 24-h scheduling period It has been demonstrated that the proposed approach leads to reduction in congestion and locational marginal prices as compared to price responsive and price taking bids and meets the energy consumption targets of distribution companies/bulk consumers

Airline Market Power and Intertemporal Price Dispersion

Abstract: This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between market structure and price dispersion in the airline markets connecting the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. Price dispersion is measured by the Gini coefficient, calculated using fares posted on the Internet at specific days before takeoff. We control for passengers' heterogeneity in their purpose of travel, as well as for such peak periods as Christmas and Easter. Our finding of a negative correlation between competition and price dispersion suggests that competition is likely to hinder the airlines' ability to price discriminate, although this effect appears to be lessened in peak periods.

Optimal production and pricing policy for a closed loop system

Abstract: A closed loop system is investigated, in which the manufacturer has two channels to satisfy the demand: manufacturing brand-new products and remanufacturing returns into as-new products. Remanufactured products have no difference from brand-new products and can be sold in the same market at the same price. The demand is uncertain and sensitive to the selling price, while the return is also stochastic and sensitive to the acquisition price of used products. A mathematical model is developed to maximize the overall profit of the system by simultaneously determining the selling price, the production quantities for brand-new products and remanufactured products, and the acquisition price of used products. Some properties of the problem are analyzed, based on which a solution procedure is presented. Through a numerical example, the impacts of the uncertainties of both demand and return on the production plan, selling price, and the acquisition price of used products are analyzed.

Competition in Multi-sided Markets: Divide and Conquer

Abstract: This paper studies Stackelberg price competition in a multi-sided market. The second-mover can engage in divide-and-conquer strategies, which involve cross-subsidies between sides. The paper recovers bounds on profits, and refines the results with a selection criteria whereby consumers resolve coordination failure in favor of a focal platform. It then analyzes perfect price discrimination with network effects, and two-sided market, shedding light on inefficiencies and strategic choices by platforms. A leading platform may refrain from selling to some side in order to soften competition, it tends to favor excessively balanced market shares and may prefer compatibility to reduce price competition. (JEL D43, D85)

Collusive price leadership

Abstract: The authors study the pattern of pricing in which price changes are first announced by one firm and then matched by its rivals. In their model, this price leadership facilitates collusion under asymmetric information. In equilibrium, the leader earns higher profits than the follower. Nonetheless, if information is sufficiently asymmetric, the less informed firm prefers to follow the better-informed firm, so the leader can emerge endogenously. The authors show that the follower can benefit from price rigidity so that prices may be changed infrequently. They also show that overall welfare may be lower under collusive price leadership than under overt collusion. Copyright 1990 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Combining multiple climate policy instruments: how not to do it

Abstract: Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable fluctuations in the carbon price, either from rising too high or falling too low. This paper reviews the implications for the carbon price of combining cap-and-trade with other policy instruments. We find that price intervention may not always have the desired effect. Simply adding a carbon tax to an existing cap-and-trade system reduces the carbon price in the market to such an extent that the overall price signal (tax plus carbon price) may remain unchanged. Generous feed-in tariffs or renewable energy obligations within a capped area have the same effect: they undermine the carbon price in the rest of the trading regime, likely increasing costs without reducing emissions. Policymakers wishing to support carbon prices should turn to hybrid instruments � that is, trading schemes with pricelike features, such as an auction reserve price � to make sure their objectives are met.

Achieving Performance and Availability Guarantees with Spot Instances

Abstract: In the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing market, spot instances refer to virtual servers that are rented via an auction. Spot instances allow IaaS providers to sell spare capacity while enabling IaaS users to acquire virtual servers at a lower price than the regular market price (also called "on demand" price). Users bid for spot instances at their chosen limit price. Based on the bids and the available capacity, the IaaS provider sets a clearing price. A bidder acquires their requested spot instances if their bid is above the clearing price. However, these spot instances may be terminated by the IaaS provider impromptu if the auction's clearing price goes above the user's limit price. In this context, this paper addresses the following question: Can spot instances be used to run paid web services while achieving performance and availability guaran-tees? The paper examines the problem faced by a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider who rents spot instances from an IaaS provider and uses them to provide a web service on behalf of a paying customer. The SaaS provider incurs a monetary cost for renting computing resources from the IaaS provider, while charging its customer for executing web service transactions and paying penalties to the customer for failing to meet performance and availability objectives. To address this problem, the paper proposes a bidding scheme and server allocation policies designed to optimize the average revenue earned by the SaaS provider per time unit. Experimental results show that the proposed approach delivers higher revenue to the SaaS provider than an alternative approach where the SaaS provider runs the web service using "on demand" instances. The paper also shows that the server allocation policies seamlessly adapt to varying market conditions, traffic conditions, penalty levels and transaction fees.

Using Transaction Prices to Re-Examine Price Dispersion in Electronic Markets

Abstract: Price dispersion is an important indicator of market efficiency. Internet-based electronic markets have the potential to reduce transaction and search costs, thereby creating more efficient, “frictionless” markets, as predicted by theories in information economics. However, earlier work has reported significant levels of price dispersion on the Internet, which is in contrast to theoretical predictions. A key feature of the existing stream of work has been its use of posted prices to estimate price dispersion. In theory, this can lead to an overestimation of price dispersion because a sale may not have occurred at the posted price. In this research, we use a unique data set of actual transaction prices collected from both the electronic and offline markets of buyers in a business-to-business market to evaluate the extent of price dispersion. We find that price dispersion in the electronic market is as low as 0.22%, which is substantially less than that reported in the existing literature. This near-zero price dispersion suggests that in some electronic markets the “law of one price” can prevail when we consider transaction prices, instead of posted prices. We further develop a theoretical framework that identifies several new drivers of price dispersion using transaction data. In particular, we focus on four product-level and market-level attributes---product cost, order cycle time, own price elasticity, and transaction quantity, and we estimate their impact on price dispersion. We also examine the electronic market's moderating role in the relationship between these drivers and price dispersion. Finally, we estimate the efficiency gains that accrue from transactions in the relatively friction-free market and find that the electronic market can enhance consumer surplus by as much as $97.92 million per year.

Optimal Price Setting With Observation and Menu Costs

Abstract: We study the price setting problem of a firm in the presence of both observation and menu costs. In this problem the firm optimally decides when to collect costly information on the adequacy of its price, an activity which we refer to as a price “review”. Upon each review, the firm chooses whether to adjust its price, subject to a menu cost, and when to conduct the next price review. This behavior is consistent with recent survey evidence documenting that firms revise prices infrequently and that only a few price revisions yield a price adjustment. The goal of the paper is to study how the firm’s choices map into several observable statistics, depending on the level and relative magnitude of the observation vs the menu cost. The observable statistics are: the frequency of price reviews, the frequency of price adjustments, the size-distribution of price adjustments, and the shape of the hazard rate of price adjustments. We provide an analytical characterization of the firm’s decisions and a mapping from the structural parameters to the observable statistics. We compare these statistics with the ones obtained for the models with only one type of cost. The predictions of the model can, with suitable data, be used to quantify the importance of the menu cost vs. the information cost. We also consider a version of the model where several price adjustment are allowed between observations, a form of price plans or indexation. We find that no indexation is optimal for small inflation rates.

The relative rigidity of monopoly pricing

Abstract: This paper seeks to explain why monopolies keep their nominal prices constant for longer periods than do tight oligopolies. We provide two possible explanations. The first is based on the presence of a small fixed cost of changing prices. The second, on small costs of discovering the optimal price. The incentive to change price for duopolists producing differentiated products exceeds that of a single monopolistic firm which produced the same tange of products as the duopoly.

Optimal Inventory Policies when Purchase Price and Demand Are Stochastic

Abstract: In this paper we consider the problem of a firm that faces a stochastic (Poisson) demand and must replenish from a market in which prices fluctuate, such as a commodity market. We describe the price evolution as a continuous stochastic process and we focus on commonly used processes suggested by the financial literature, such as the geometric Brownian motion and the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. It is well known that under variable purchase price, a price-dependent base-stock policy is optimal. Using the single-unit decomposition approach, we explicitly characterize the optimal base-stock level using a series of threshold prices. We show that the base-stock level is first increasing and then decreasing in the current purchase price. We provide a procedure for calculating the thresholds, which yields closed-form solutions when price follows a geometric Brownian motion and implicit solutions under the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck price model. In addition, our numerical study shows that the optimal policy performs much better than inventory policies that ignore future price evolution, because it tends to place larger orders when prices are expected to increase.

Agricultural Price Transmission Across Space and Commodities During Price Bubbles

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate agricultural price transmission during price bubbles and to assess whether the implemented trade policy measures did eventually play a role. We study horizontal cereal price transmission both across different market places and across different commodities. The analysis is performed using Italian and international weekly spot (cash) prices in the years 2006-2010, a period of generalized exceptional exuberance and consequent rapid drop of agricultural prices. Firstly, the properties of the price series are explored to assess which data generation process may lie behind the observed patterns. Secondly, the interdependence across prices is estimated adopting appropriate cointegration techniques. Results suggest that most prices behave as I(1) series, though some also show either fractional integration in the first differences or explosive roots. A long-run (cointegration) relationship occurs among prices of the same commodity across different markets but not among prices of different commodities. In both long-run and short-run relationships the "bubble" seems to have played a role as well as the consequent policy intervention on import duties.

The Speed of Gasoline Price Response in Markets With and Without Edgeworth Cycles

Abstract: Retail gasoline prices are known to respond fairly slowly to wholesale price changes. This does not appear to be true for markets with Edgeworth price cycles. Recently, many retail gasoline markets in the midwestern U.S. and in other countries have been shown to exhibit price cycles, in which competition generates rapid cyclical retail price movements. We show that cost changes in cycling markets are passed on 2 to 3 times faster than in markets without cycles. We argue that the constant price movement inherent within the Edgeworth cycle eliminates price frictions and allows firms to pass on cost fluctuations more easily.

Optimal Control of Residential Energy Storage Under Price Fluctuations

Abstract: An increasing number of retail energy markets exhibit price fluctuations and provide home users the oppor- tunity to buy energy at lower than average prices. However, such cost savings are hard to realize in practice because they require human users to observe the price fluctuations and shi ft their electricity demand to low price periods. We propose to temporarily store energy of low price periods in a home battery and use it later to satisfy user demand when energy prices are high. This enables home users to save on their electricity bill by exploiting price variability without changing their consumption habits. We formulate the problem of minimizing the cost of energy storage purchases subject to both user demands and prices as a Markov Decision Process and show that the optimal policy has a threshold structure. We also use a numerical example to show that this policy can lead to significant cost savings, an d we offer various directions for future research. Index Terms—Battery storage, dynamic pricing, dynamic pro- gramming, energy storage, threshold policy.

Dynamic Pricing of Limited Inventories When Customers Negotiate

Abstract: Although take-it-or-leave-it pricing is the main mode of operation for many retailers, a number of retailers discreetly allow price negotiation when some haggle-prone customers ask for a bargain. At these retailers, the posted price, which itself is subject to dynamic adjustments in response to the pace of sales during the selling season, serves two important roles: (i) it is the take-it-or-leave-it price to many customers who do not bargain, and (ii) it is the price from which haggle-prone customers negotiate down. To effectively measure the benefit of dynamic pricing and negotiation in such a retail environment, one must take into account the interactions among inventory, dynamic pricing, and negotiation. The outcome of the negotiation (and the final price a customer pays) depends on the inventory level, the remaining selling season, the retailer's bargaining power, and the posted price. We model the retailer's dynamic pricing problem as a dynamic program, where the revenues from both negotiation and posted pricing are embedded in each period. We characterize the optimal posted price and the resulting negotiation outcome as a function of inventory and time. We also show that negotiation is an effective tool to achieve price discrimination, particularly when the inventory level is high and/or the remaining selling season is short, even when implementing negotiation is costly.

Spatial Price Discrimination in Agricultural Product Procurement Markets: A Computational Economics Approach

Abstract: Significant transport costs and spatially distributed supply and processing create oligopsony power in agricultural markets. Price discrimination expressed in the form of partial or complete absorption of freight charges by processors is often observed in these environments, but we understand little about how these pricing decisions are made. Analytical approaches are often intractable. As an alternative, we propose a computational economics approach to analyze a general spatial competition model and study firms' choices of spatial pricing policy. Instead of the commonly presumed free‐on‐board pricing, we find that buyers choose price discrimination, either through uniform delivered pricing or through partial freight absorption.