ON THE VALUE OF A LARGE CUSTOMER BASE IN MARKETS WITH SWITCHING COSTS*

It is usually acknowledged that firms benefit from a large customer base in markets with switching costs. However, Klemperer [1995] argues that this may not be true if an increase in the size of a firm's customer base induces fierce price competition, making the firm worse off. This paper shows that such an outcome can be obtained under standard assumptions, such as homogeneous goods and uniformly distributed switching costs. In the model, firms have very limited incentives to fight for market shares, and the notion that switching costs make markets less competitive is stronger than previously shown.     

VERTICAL MERGERS,FORECLOSURE AND RAISING RIVALS' COSTS – EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE*

The hypothesis that vertically integrated firms have an incentive to foreclose the input market because foreclosure raises its downstream rivals' costs is the subject of much controversy in the theoretical industrial organization literature. A powerful argument against this hypothesis is that, absent commitment, such foreclosure cannot occur in Nash equilibrium. The laboratory data reported in this paper provide experimental evidence in favor of the hypothesis. Markets with a vertically integrated firm are significantly less competitive than those where firms are separate. While the experimental results violate the standard equilibrium notion, they are consistent with the quantal‐response generalization of Nash equilibrium.     

What types of switching costs to create under behavior-based price discrimination?

We study firms' incentives to create switching costs using a four-period model consisting of two consecutive price-competing stages intervened by options to create switching costs early (before price competition) and late (during price competition). Acknowledging that many real/social switching costs need to be created early while many contractual/pecuniary switching costs are set up late during the competition, we show that firms are better off minimizing real/social switching costs while maximizing contractual/pecuniary switching costs. The results highlight the importance of timing of creation that is embedded in different types of switching costs. We also show that switching costs can actually benefit consumers when firms practice behavior-based price discrimination because consumers can enjoy benefits of deep price discounts without the hassle of actually switching. Therefore, an observed lack of consumer switching should not be immediately interpreted as lack of competition in markets where both switching costs and behavior-based pricing exist.     

Customer capabilities,switching costs,and bank performance

Customers develop switching costs when they invest time and effort to develop capabilities required to optimally use a given product. Such capabilities are likely to be firm specific and cannot be transferred perfectly to competitors' product offerings. Customers who face switching costs are likely to remain with the same firm and consume complementary products that meet their needs. Thus, firms can achieve competitive advantage by exploiting customers' switching costs. In this paper, we hypothesize that the extent to which firms can benefit from customers' switching costs is contingent upon the firms' internal cross‐selling capabilities. We use online banking data to test our hypotheses and find that customers' switching costs contribute to banks' profitability only in the presence of high levels of internal cross‐selling capabilities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

消费契约的双重特性与大企业危机

消费契约具有长期契约特征，不但企业对消费者的购买激励具备投资特征，消费者也会在购买过程中形成专用性资产。通过转移成本壁垒，企业和消费者被封闭在一种双边的长期契约关系当中，这种关系造成了消费契约的相对稳定性。但同时由于契约的不完全性，一旦消费者预期专用性资产变为沉没成本，潜在消费者将转投其他企业，造成企业的迅速倒闭。如果大企业不能采取有效措施，小的失误可能会演变成大的危机；由于大企业存在着危机的外部性．因此需要相应的公共政策。     

Vertical Integration and Internet Strategies in the Apparel Industry

We explore the relationship between vertical scope and the ability to respond to a significant economic shock by studying how firms in the apparel industry have adapted to the Internet. We find that vertically integrated specialty retailers, e.g., The Gap, tended to start on-line sales sooner than non-integrated vendors, e.g., Nautica, and department stores. We also find that the products of vertically integrated retailers are more available on-line than those of non-integrated vendors. These results are consistent with greater contractual barriers, coordination costs and incentive problems that non-integrated brands face relative to integrated companies in responding to the e-commerce opportunity.     

When do switching costs make markets more or less competitive?

In a two-period duopoly setting in which switching costs are the only reason why products may be perceived as differentiated, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for switching costs to lead to higher prices in the first period as well as to higher overall profitability. We show that this happens if and only if switching costs are not too large. We present the only treatment up to date of how switching costs (and only switching costs) affect competition based on the assumption that switching costs differ across consumers, which allows us to illustrate the undesired byproduct of assuming that products exhibit substantial horizontal differentiation. Not only do we draw implications for the classical literature on competition with switching costs, but also for the more recent one that rests upon such an assumption too.     

Strategic investments under competition for access provision

We examine competition for access provision when symmetric vertically integrated firms invest in infrastructure upgrades. Spillovers through access have two effects (a wholesale-profit effect and a retail-production effect) on infrastructure investment made by vertically integrated firms. When the vertically integrated firms freely set access charges, due to the dominance of the wholesale-profit effect, quality differentials endogenously occur between these firms (asymmetric equilibria). When access charges are regulated, symmetric equilibria occur with multiple equilibrium investments due to the retail-production effect. Because competition for access provision induces a strong incentive for infrastructure investment, it also achieves a higher social welfare than does access regulation.     

Do switching costs mediate the relationship between entry timing and performance?

The purpose of this paper is to test the effectiveness of switching costs as an isolating mechanism in the context of the first‐mover advantage theory. Whereas both the literature on switching costs and on pioneering propose this as a mechanism through which firms could obtain sustainable competitive advantage, other authors offer a rationale for thinking that this is not the case. We test our hypotheses in the context of the European mobile telecommunications industry. This is a sector that has been characterized by high rates of growth in the number of subscribers, which could reduce the effectiveness of switching costs from being effective as an isolating mechanism. Our results show that switching costs are an important tool through which first‐mover advantages materialize. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The behavioral additionality effects of a tax incentive program on firms’ composition of R&D investment

This paper investigates the behavioral additionality effects of a unique high- and new- technology enterprise (HNTE) program in China. The program provides a reduced corporate income tax to certificated HNTEs. By distinguishing research expenses from development costs, we examine if the tax incentive program affects firms’ composition of R&D investment, based on a sample of Chinese listed firms. The results indicate that the tax incentive program encourages firms to focus more on development than on research. The effects are also found to be heterogeneous among the first-time, repeated, and one-time certification users. The results imply that tax incentives prompt firms to invest in short-term development opportunities with promising private returns. Conversely, they are less likely to stimulate risky research projects with potential high rates of social and long-term economic returns. Our study highlights the importance of understanding the behavioral additionality effects for innovation policy evaluations and better policy designs.     

Predicting Household Switching Behavior and Switching Costs at Depository Institutions

This paper uses new survey data to investigate the covariates of self-reported switching costs and switching behavior by deposit account holders. Factors affecting geographic mobility appear to be most important in explaining the duration of deposit relationships. Both younger and older respondents are more likely than others to be at their first bank ever, suggesting a cohort effect in deposit relationships. Households reporting switching costs, net of the benefits from switching, are less likely than others to have stayed with a bank for prices or customer service, suggesting that switching costs may decrease price sensitivity. Switching costs appear more severe for households with high income or education and for households with very low income or minority ethnicity. These findings imply that banking markets characterized by such households may present greater entry costs for new firms.     

Technological Incompatibility, Endogenous Switching Costs and Lock-in

Systems are goods comprising of durables that are sequentially updated with complements. With sequential purchases, if suppliers produce incompatible brands, consumers who upgrade systems with complements of a different brand must replace the durables they own. Thus, the price of these durables is an endogenous switching cost. The paper deals with the concern that firms may use incompatibility to create consumer's switching costs to reduce competition in aftermarkets. However, it shows that, with homogenous durables, and small costs of reaching compatibility, endogenous switching costs increase intertemporal price competition to the extent that producers prefer to have compatible technologies.     

Multi-dimensional analysis of perceived switching costs

The creation of switching costs for customers is an important aspect of strategic planning in today's competitive environment. These costs enable firms to address variations in customer preferences and competitor influence in attempting to gain their customers' loyalty. Although the recognition of the importance of such switching costs has long existed in a variety of contexts, the conceptualization and measurement of the construct is lacking in clarity and consistency. This study proposes that perceived switching costs (PSC) constitute a higher-order construct made up of six dimensions that reflect the customers' perception of the time, effort, and money involved in the switching process. The study also proposes that each of the six dimensions has a distinctive set of antecedents and outcomes. The test of the model is an empirical study in the Spanish insurance sector. The results confirm the validity of the higher-order formative construct of PSC and provide insights for specific strategies to address the perceptions of various customers with regard to switching costs.     

Yardstick Competition to Elicit Private Information: An Empirical Analysis

The Japanese regulatory authority has introduced a new hybrid regulation that combines a fixed-price contract with ex ante yardstick inspection for local (public utility) gas distribution. The latter compares a firm??s reported costs with those of ??similar?? firms, and penalizes high-cost firms. We infer the effect of yardstick on information revelation by comparing the actual welfare level with the hypothetical full-information welfare level. Our results suggest that only the very first inspection was effective in reducing firms?? incentive to report higher costs.     

Switching costs in local credit markets

Switching costs are a key determinant of market performance. This paper tests their existence in the corporate loan market in which they are likely to play a central role because of the complexity of contracts and the relevance of informational problems. Using very detailed data at bank-firm level on four Italian local credit markets we empirically show that firms tend to iterate their choice of the main bank over time. This inertia is not related to unobserved and time invariant firms' preferences across banks and can be attributed to the existence of switching costs. Moreover these costs are higher for single-bank firms. We also offer evidence that banks price discriminate between new and old borrowers by charging lower interest rates to the former in order to cover part of the switching costs. The discount amounts to about 44 basis points and is equal to 7% of the average interest rate. These results prove robust to a number of other potential identification drawbacks.     

Alleviating managerial dilemmas in human‐capital‐intensive firms through incentives: Evidence from M&A legal advisors

Research summary: We examine how human‐capital‐intensive firms deploy their human assets and how firm‐specific human capital interacts with incentives to influence this deployment. Our empirical context is the UK M&A legal market, where micro‐data enable us to observe the allocation of lawyers to M&A mandates under different incentive regimes. We find that law firms actively equalize the workload among their lawyers to seek efficiency gains, while “stretching” lawyers with high firm‐specific capital to a greater extent. However, lawyers with high firm‐specific capital also appear to influence the staffing process in their favor, leading to unbalanced allocations and less sharing of projects and clients. Paradoxically, law firms may adopt a seniority‐based rent‐sharing system that weakens individual incentives to mitigate the impact of incentive conflicts on resource deployment. Managerial summary: The study highlights the dilemmas when professional service firms allocate their key individuals to incoming projects, and the role that monetary incentives play in aggravating or alleviating these dilemmas. In the context of UK M&A law firms, we find that partners have a tendency to be attached to too many projects and not to share enough work, which is exacerbated when individual monetary incentives are stronger. Firms adopting a seniority based incentive system (lockstep system) are able to alleviate this effect. This implies that there is a trade‐off between rewarding personal performance versus balancing workloads and fostering collaboration among professionals. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The dynamic provision of product diversity under duopoly

This paper builds a dynamic duopoly model to examine the provision of new varieties over time. Consumers experience temporary satiation, and hence higher consumption of the current variety lowers demand for future varieties. The equilibrium can be characterized by a combination of monopolistic pricing and nearly zero profits (competitive timing). In particular, if the cost of producing a new variety is not too low then firms tend to avoid head-to-head competition and set the short-run profit maximizing price. However, firms tend to introduce new varieties as soon as demand has grown sufficiently to cover costs. From a second best perspective, the equilibrium may exhibit excessive product diversity. However, if firms coordinate their frequency of new product introductions, then consumers are likely to be harmed. It is also shown that equilibrium prices are moderated by two factors. First, consumers’ option value of waiting reduces their willingness to pay. Second, competition reduces firms’ incentives to engage in intertemporal price discrimination.     

Vertical integration and innovation

Innovation is a driving force for most industries, where it moreover affects many stages of the vertical chain. We study the impact of vertical integration on innovation in an industry where firms need to undertake risky R&D investments at both production and distribution stages. Vertical integration brings better coordination within the integrated firm, which boosts its investment incentive at both upstream and downstream levels. However, it is only mutually beneficial for firms to integrate when both upstream and downstream innovations are important. When innovation is irrelevant at one level, firms favor instead vertical separation. The analysis provides insights for the wave of mergers and R&D outsourcing observed in the pharmaceutical industry and other vertically related industries.     

Vertical Structure and Patent Pools

It is well known that patent pools can enhance efficiency by eliminating the complements problem. This paper investigates how the presence of vertically integrated firms affects the economic impact of a patent pool. Without a patent pool, the presence of integrated firms may either increase or decrease the final product price as there are two countervailing effects – reduced double marginalization and raising rivals costs. However, when there is a patent pool, vertical integration always lowers the final product price. In conclusion, the economic efficiency arguments for patent pools are enhanced when some firms are vertically integrated.     

Switching costs in the US seed industry: Technology adoption and welfare impacts

We evaluate the role of brand and technology switching costs in the US soybean seed industry using a unique dataset of actual seed purchases by about 28,000 farmers from 1996 to 2016. Using a random coefficients logit model of demand, we estimate brand and technology switching costs, characterize the distributions of buyers’ willingness to pay for seed brands and the glyphosate tolerance (GT) trait, and assess the implications of brand and technology switching costs for farmers’ welfare, technology adoption, firm profits, and firm market shares. We find that farmers are willing to pay large premiums for brand labels, and even larger premiums for the GT trait, although there is considerable heterogeneity in these values. Switching costs play an important role in the soybean seed industry. Eliminating these costs would significantly increase buyers’ welfare, reduce seed prices and firm profits, decrease adoption of the GT trait, and impact industry consolidation by expanding smaller firms’ market shares.