Was the economics of information approach wrong all the way? Evidence from German grocery r(E)tailing

The economics of information approach suggests that as online retailing matures, information asymmetry will enforce the reduction of price dispersion online as providers will operate in conditions close to perfect competition. The internet has already become a part of our life and shopping experience. In Germany, over 20% of all electronic, media and leisure-related products are bought online. The role of digital channels is expected to increase further, especially in the latecomer sectors. Grocery retailing is one of such sectors still in the making and the share of online players in retail revenues is expected to grow drastically by 2020. Since online food retailing has not been studied thoroughly and little is known about price levels and dispersion between online and offline markets, our study fills this gap by showing that despite the theoretical predictions price dispersion exist both between online and offline grocery providers as well as across online retailers.     

The impact of trade facilitation on poverty and inequality: Evidence from low- and middle-income countries

This paper using a trade model of imperfect competition and product differentiation, examines the welfare effects of two popular tariff-tax reforms: (i) a tariff cut combined with an equal increase in the consumption tax and (ii) a tariff cut combined with an increase in the consumption tax that leaves the consumer price of the imported good unchanged. It is shown that if tax revenues are lump-sum distributed and firms compete over prices, then coordinated tariff-tax reforms improve welfare for a low degree of product differentiation, whereas these reforms are welfare-reducing for any degree of product differentiation under Cournot competition. When, instead, revenues are used to finance the provision of public goods, then the total effect of these reforms on welfare depends, under plausible assumptions, on the strength of the consumer's valuation of the public good.     

Healthy Food: Determinants of Price Knowledge of Functional Dairy Products

Agri-food business pricing practices assume that consumers know about prices and that price is an impediment to healthy food purchase and consumption. The present article assesses functional dairy food shoppers’ price knowledge accuracy and its determinants. The data were gathered from 207 face-to-face interviews with shoppers at the point of sale and were analyzed with binary logistic regression testing a number of set hypotheses. Results show that healthy food price knowledge is higher than for conventional food but still low, and consumers tend to underestimate the price paid. Price knowledge accuracy increases with high purchase frequency, promotional products, hedonistic consumption, and for enhanced function products. Results provide a basis for higher sustainable pricing strategies. Consumers’ inability to distinguish misleading pricing strategies calls for regulators to ensure fair and ethical market practices, especially for healthy food.     

Analyzing Price Premiums for Foods in Japan: Measuring Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Quality-Related Attributes

This study attempts to elucidate the characteristics of price premiums for food products from the consumers' viewpoint. After conducting a survey, consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for 13 important food elements is analyzed for 10 food categories. The main findings were first, the categories that can easiest achieve a price premium are fruit and vegetables and meat and fish with the hardest being snacks and sweets and frozen foods. Second, the food element most related to price premiums is safety while the least related is convenience. Finally, an appropriate level for price premiums for food products is generally about 20%.     

How do you feel when you see a list of prices? the interplay among price dispersion,perceived risk and initial trust in Chinese C2C market

The issues of trust fraud, product genuineness and price dispersion jointly make Chinese C2C buyers difficult to identify trustworthy sellers with a low price. Little is known about the generation of initial trust when buyers search products and receive lists of widely ranged prices. This study proposes a theoretical model to explain how price dispersion interacts with other factors in C2C purchase, such as initial trust, perceived risk, perceived value and purchase intention. Product type is considered as a moderator. 261 students were invited in a survey-based experiment. The results from PLS analysis show that price dispersion negatively affects perceived value, whilst, positively affects perceived risk, which further influences perceived value negatively. Price dispersion also negatively influences initial trust through perceived risk. Moreover, the negative effects of price dispersion are stronger when buyers purchase high-touch products.     

Low price guarantees as signals of lowest price: The moderating role of perceived price dispersion

This article presents two experimental studies examining the effects of a low price guarantee on consumers’ pre-purchase evaluations and behavioral intentions. The authors first examine how the effects of a low price guarantee are moderated by consumer perception of market price dispersion. The results show that low price guarantee effects are likely to be attenuated when consumers perceive market price dispersion for a product to be high. The second study shows that higher levels of penalty can help restore a low price guarantee's effectiveness. Specifically, a low price guarantee with progressively higher levels of penalty leads to incrementally more favorable effects on key consumer outcomes when perceived price dispersion is high. Interestingly, penalty level has no such incremental benefit in case of low perceived price dispersion. Theoretical and managerial implications of the authors’ findings, the limitations of the studies, and future research opportunities are discussed.     

Inflation-induced adaptive behavior

Periods of rapidly rising prices are seen by many as cyclical and pervasive phenomena in modern day economic systems. When rapid price increases occur, they are likely to induce adaptive behavior on the part of consumers. This article reports on a study seeking to analyze consumer inflation-induced adaptive behavior as it relates to three food-related consumer activities–food buying, preparation, and consumption. Results indicate that consumers, in general, attempt to adjust to the changing economic environment in several ways: they exercise more care and planning in food shopping, are more price sensitive and price conscious, are willing to sacrifice convenience but not quality, and try to maintain their usual level of food consumption and food habits. Results also indicate that inflation leads to greater adaptive behavior on the part of lower income consumers.     

Price-Quality Correlations for Packaged Food Products

Prior investigations have indicated that relationships between price and product quality are considerably weaker for non-durables than for durables. Among non-durables, packaged food products frequently have exhibited the poorest correspondence between price and quality. This study, utilizing data from Consumers Union, analyzes the relationships between price and a measure of product quality for 679 brands in forty packaged food product classes over a fifteen year period. The study generally confirms earlier preliminary conclusions that the correlation between quality and price for packaged food products is near zero. In addition, the findings indicate that convenience foods, particularly frozen foods, display the poorest correspondence between price and product quality with more than 43 percent of all frozen food product classes exhibiting negative relationships between price and product quality. Some possible explanations for these findings and their implications for public policy are advanced.     

Why is Price Dispersion Higher Online than Offline? The Impact of Retailer Type and Shopping Risk on Price Dispersion

When physically similar products, of similar quality, are offered by retailers both online and offline, we often observe that the dispersion in prices of these products online is greater than the price dispersion offline. This observation runs counter to early theories that suggested price dispersion online would be smaller than that offline due to the ease of search and information availability online. This paper investigates and provides an explanation for this puzzling phenomenon by examining the impact of two important drivers of price dispersion: retailer type and consumers’ shopping risk. Retailer type refers to whether a retailer is a pure offline, pure online, or dual channel retailer. Shopping risk is defined as the product of consumers’ perceived risk of shopping and the transaction uncertainty related to shopping at different types of retailers.A game-theoretic approach is adopted to model consumers’ price search and product purchase, as well as price competition within and across retailer types in online and offline markets. Equilibrium pricing strategies are derived for different retailer types competing for different consumer segments with different levels of perceived shopping risk. The impact of retailer type and shopping risk on online versus offline price dispersion are quantified, and conditions when price dispersion is greater online than offline are identified.Results indicate that price dispersion is greater online when the number of pure online retailers is sufficiently large and is increasing in the number of pure online retailers. In addition, a reduction in online shopping risk may actually increase online price dispersion. Results further suggest that even without any online sales, dual channel retailers should maintain their online presence for the purpose of information dissemination, which justifies the importance for pure offline retailer to incorporate webrooming strategies, where consumers can search for prices online but purchase offline.     

Market information and price dispersion: Unlisted stocks and NASDAQ

Two methodologically distinct tests strongly support the hypothesis that the extent of price dispersion in a market is an economic decision based on the costs and benefits of price information. In the markets for unlisted common stocks, the implementation of the NASDAQ system was a discrete event that raised the marginal value and reduced the marginal cost of price information. A controlled comparison of dispersion before and since NASDAQ shows that NASDAQ reduced dispersion among price quotations by one-quarter to one-third. In the underlying cross-sectional regression for unlisted stocks, the estimated parameters also support the hypothesis.     

Who Benefits from Price Promotions?

This article reports new research on price promotions in grocery products. The results are striking and taken with other evidence they suggest that few consumers benefit from deep-discount price promotions. The study raises big questions about how manufacturers and retailers allocate their marketing budgets - and even about whether companies' management accounting and remuneration practices may be leading to reduced profits.     

Tradability, productivity, and international economic integration

This paper develops a model of endogenously tradable goods to study the implications of international integration for price dispersion and pricing to market. A distinctive feature of the model is heterogeneity in both trade costs and productivity. The model highlights the role of heterogeneity in shaping how new entrants at the extensive margin differ from incumbent traders, thereby giving extensive margin movements distinctive implications relative to the intensive margin. In particular, the model predicts that international integration mainly along the extensive margin should be associated with a more limited degree of price convergence. This prediction finds support in cross-sectional regressions on European data and offers insight into recent integration episodes.     

我国城乡居民食用农产品消费需求弹性比较——基于2003-2012年省级面板数据

文章利用AIDS模型,采用省级面板数据,对城乡居民主要食用农产品消费支出弹性及需求价格弹性进行估算,分析预算支出和价格变动对食用农产品消费的影响。结果表明：城乡居民对水产品和肉禽的消费支出均富有弹性,对粮食、植物油、蛋类和鲜瓜果的消费支出均缺乏弹性。农村居民对肉禽和蔬菜的支出弹性明显高于城镇居民。城乡居民对水产品的需求量对价格波动很敏感,但对粮食、肉禽、植物油、蔬菜和鲜瓜果的自价格弹性均为缺乏弹性。价格波动对城镇居民食用农产品消费的影响更大,而收入变动对农村居民食用农产品消费的影响更大。以上发现可为政府采取差别化政策引导居民改善食品消费结构及促进农业结构升级提供借鉴。     

Consumer protection: Corrective measures

The failure of contemporary economies to give consumers “what they really want” manifests itself in a set of “consumer problems” that give rise to the demand for consumer protection. The pivotal problems: monopoly, informationally imperfect markets, consumer dissatisfaction or grievances, the underrepresentation of consumers, disadvantaged consumers. This article deals with the entire spectrum of measures designed to eliminate or correct these problems. It suggests criteria for assessing any corrective measure and deals generally with the merits and drawbacks of regulatory and legislative approaches before considering specific corrective measures. The body of the paper focuses on specific measures, giving examples and citing advantages and disadvantages. The paper is summarized by posing the crucial questions in consumer protection on which policy-makers and citizens alike must make up their minds.     

Robustness of an Intermittent Program of Comparative Retail Food Price Information

This study compares the distribution of food-item market basket prices across stores and relative to a local newspaper retail food price report. Distributions of prices for market baskets comprised of national brands and cheapest alternative brands coincided closely with the intermittent retail food price report. This suggests that consumer organizations with limited resources can produce comparative food-store price reports that provide useful information to consumers.     

Consumer Heterogeneity in the Willingness to Pay for Local and Organic Food

Due to growth and changing distribution channels for organic food in Germany, there is some concern that organic food is losing authenticity. Contrarily, local food production is seen as a new trend and is gaining market share. This article analyzes whether those alternative concepts of organic and local food production rather support or threaten each other in consumers’ choice. Results of a Bavarian survey, including a choice experiment for bread, beer, and milk on the attributes price, brand, local, and organic, are analyzed using a mixed logit model. Willingness-to-pay estimations confirm the importance of local production to the surveyed consumers, especially in interaction with organic production, leading to the conclusion that the two production methods can support each other in achieving price premiums. The estimated standard deviations show significant heterogeneity of the parameters for all three products for most attributes.     

Role of Forgetting in Memory-Based Choice Decisions: A Structural Model

We propose a structural model to investigate the impact of forgetting on consumers' brand choice decisions in frequently purchased products. Forgetting results in consumers imperfectly recalling their prior brand evaluations when making a purchase decision in the category. We conceptualize the imperfect recall by positing that consumers recall their prior evaluations with noise. Based on prior research in the behavioral area, we characterize the extent of forgetting as an increasing and concave function of time. Our framework generates analytical results on the impact of forgetting on consumers' brand evaluations and their consequent purchase behavior. We calibrate our model using scanner panel data for liquid detergents. Furthermore, we obtain insights into the consumers' extent of forgetting in the category, extent of learning, predicted price elasticities and implications on state dependence and habit persistence. Our results underscore the importance of modeling consumers' ability to recall only imperfectly.     

The Dynamics of Local Markets: A Case Study of Cameras

Longitudinal data on the availability and prices of two related products in a local market are used to assess the dynamic performance of the markets for these products. Consistent with prior research, a large degree of price dispersion was found for both products. There was some evidence of a modest reduction in price dispersion over time, and of the lowest quality models to “drop out” of the market. Store quality differences and likely search costs did not appear to explain the remaining dispersion.     

Two-Stage Determinants of the Organic Food Retailing Landscape: The Case of Manhattan,New York

Retail sales of organic food products have been increasing faster than any other category of food and have penetrated mainstream retail grocery outlets. The majority of the literature on organic markets explores the socioeconomic characteristics of consumers, linking these traits to the probability of buying organic food, and it suggests that access to organic food is an important but overlooked factor in such studies. More recently, research focusing on food retailer marketing strategies for organic food finds that traditional strategies such as price promotions are largely unsuccessful with increasing sales for the organic food consumer. This article focuses on the retailer decision to offer organic food for sale. We model the decision as a two-stage process, where the retailer’s first decision is whether to sell organic food, and the second decision determines how many different organic products to offer for sale. In doing so, by using data collected in stores, we assess the organic food retail landscape in Manhattan, NY. We find that the decision to offer organic food for sale depends on the neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, and the amount of organic food offered for sale depends on the size of the store.     

Effect of Normative and Affective Aspects on Willingness to Pay for Domestic Food Products—A Multiple Price List Experiment

There is limited knowledge about which factors underlie consumers’ preferences for domestic food products. We used a non-hypothetical multiple-price list experiment to investigate the effect of affective (product-related emotions) and normative (consumer ethnocentrism and subjective norms) factors on consumer willingness to pay for domestic food products. A total of 166 Croatian consumers were given a choice between domestic and foreign food products with different price premiums for domestic food. The results indicate that consumers are willing to pay a premium for both low- and high-involvement domestic food products. Consumer willingness to pay for domestic products is influenced by ethnocentrism, product-related emotions, and sociodemographic variables, but not by social norms.