Supermarket choice and supermarket competition in market equilibrium

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Smith, H
• 署名单位: University of Oxford
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1111/0034-6527.00283
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 235-263
• 关键词: industry; markups; POWER

摘要

Multi-store firms are common in the retailing industry. Theory suggests that cross-elasticities between stores of the same firm enhance market power. To evaluate the importance of this effect in the U.K. supermarket industry, we estimate a model of consumer choice and expenditure using three data sources: profit margins for each chain, a survey of consumer choices and a data-set of store characteristics. To permit plausible substitution patterns, the utility model interacts consumer and store characteristics. We measure market power by calculating the effect of merger and demerger on Nash equilibrium prices. Demerger reduces the prices of the largest firms by between 2 and 3.8% depending on local concentration; mergers between the largest firms lead to price increases up to 7(.)4%.