Flirting with the enemy: online competitor referral and entry-deterrence

Internet retailers often compete fiercely for consumers through expensive marketing efforts like search engine advertising, online coupons and a variety of special deals. Against this background, it is somewhat puzzling that many online retailers have recently begun referring their website visitors to their direct competitors. In this paper, using an analytical model, we examine this counterintuitive practice and posit that an entry deterrence motive can potentially explain this marketplace puzzle. Specifically, we develop a model where two incumbents compete for consumers” business while facing a potential entrant who is deciding whether to enter the market. In addition to setting the price, each incumbent firm could potentially display a referral link to its direct competitor. Our analysis reveals that when confronted with a potential entry, an incumbent may refer consumers to its competitor, intensifying the market competition that could result in shutting off the entrant. Furthermore, we show that when referral efficiency is exogenous, it is possible that in equilibrium only one incumbent refers its customers to competitor (i.e., one-way referral) or both incumbents refer their customers to each other (i.e, two-way referral). When referral efficiency is endogenous, the ex-ante symmetric incumbents may choose asymmetric referral efficiencies ex-post. We extend the model in a number of directions including making the entrant share endogenous and allowing incumbents to be asymmetric. Overall, our results indicate that firms may be motivated by entry deterrence to voluntarily refer consumers to their direct competitors even when they are paid nothing for the referral.     

Capacity Constrained Firms and Expansion Subsidies: Should Governments Avoid Generous Subsidies?

This paper examines entry deterrence and signaling when an incumbent firm experiences capacity constraints. Our results show that if the costs that constrained and unconstrained incumbents incur when expanding their facilities are substantially different, separating equilibria can be supported under large parameter values whereby information is perfectly transmitted to the entrant. If, in contrast, both types of incumbent face similar expansion costs, subsidies that reduce expansion costs can help move the industry from a pooling to a separating equilibrium with associated efficient entry. Nonetheless, our results demonstrate that if subsidies are very generous entry patterns remain unaffected, suggesting a potential disadvantage of policies that significantly reduce firms’ expansion costs.     

One‐Way Compatibility,Two‐Way Compatibility and Entry in Network Industries

We study the strategic choice of compatibility between two initially incompatible network goods in a two‐stage game played by an incumbent and an entrant firm. Compatibility may be achieved by means of a converter. We derive a number of results under different assumptions about the nature of the converter (one‐way vs two‐way), the existence of property rights and the possibility of side payments. With incompatibility, entry deterrence occurs for sufficiently strong network effects. In the case of a two‐way converter, which can only be supplied by the incumbent, incompatibility will result in equilibrium unless side payments are allowed and the network externalities are sufficiently low. When both firms can build a one‐way converter and there are no property rights on the necessary technical specifications, the unique equilibrium involves full compatibility. Finally, when each firm has property rights on its technical specifications, full incompatibility is observed at the equilibrium with no side payments; when these are allowed the entrant sells access to its network to the incumbent which refuses to do the same and asymmetric one‐way compatibility results in equilibrium.     

Asymmetric Collusion with Growing Demand

We characterize collusion sustainability in markets where demand growth triggers the entry of a new firm whose efficiency may be different from the efficiency of the incumbents. We find that the profit-sharing rule that firms adopt to divide the cartel profit after entry is a key determinant of the incentives for collusion (before and after entry). In particular, if the incumbents and the entrant are very asymmetric, collusion without side-payments cannot be sustained. However, if firms divide joint profits through bargaining and are sufficiently patient, collusion is sustainable even if firms are very asymmetric.     

Entry deterrence/accommodation with imperfect strategic thinking capability

Both through empirical research and laboratory experiments it has been shown that managers are heterogeneous in strategic thinking-i.e., not all the managers can accurately conjecture their competitors’ behavior and actions. In this paper, we examine the entry deterrence/accommodation strategy of an incumbent firm facing a potential entrant that may behave less strategically than the incumbent in the way of conjecturing competitors’ actions and beliefs. We adapt the Cognitive Hierarchy model to capture this heterogeneity among the managers of the entrant firm and the incumbent firm. Surprisingly, we show that the incumbent can deter entry by investing in expanding the market size and the competition may increase the incumbent’s incentive to invest in market expansion. If entry does occur, the market expansion in our model also benefits entrant comparing to the case without market expansion. This feature of our result sets it apart from the standard result in the entry deterrence literature, which tends to suggest that incumbent has to either over-invest in actions harmful to entrant if entry occurs. In our model investing in expanding the market size makes the entrant to update its belief about the incumbent’s strategic thinking capability downward and thus, decreases the entrant’s expected profitability, which in turn deters entry. Our research has important implications especially for emerging markets given that the lack of management talent is a particularly severe problem among local firms in emerging markets and multinational companies pioneer in the emerging markets with great market expansion opportunities have to face the potential entry of local companies.     

Uncovering Entry Deterrence in the Presence of Learning-by-Doing

This paper investigates a signaling entry deterrence model under learning-by-doing. We show that a monopolist’s practice of entry deterrence imposes smaller welfare losses (or larger welfare gains) when learning effects are present than when they are absent, making the intervention of antitrust authorities less urgent. If, however, the welfare loss associated to entry deterrence is still significant, and thus intervention is needed, our paper demonstrates that the incumbent’s practice of entry deterrence is easier to detect by a regulator who does not have access to accurate information about the incumbent’s profit function. Learning-by-doing hence facilitates the regulator’s ability to detect entry deterrence, thus suggesting its role as an “ally” of antitrust authorities.     

Repetitive Advertising to Deter Entry

This paper develops a model in which advertising not only informs consumers of brands, but also can influence consumer brand choices through its repetition. By examining a multi‐stage game in which two firms sequentially advertise before simultaneously setting a price, we show that repetitive advertising can be a legitimate entry‐deterrence weapon available to an incumbent in subgame perfect equilibrium. This demonstrates that firms’ conduct of advertising repetition has anticompetitive implications.     

Patent Protection,Startup Takeovers,and Open Innovation

Abstract

Open innovation largely relies on startup innovators transferring their R&D to incumbent firms. Yet, such innovators are at a disadvantage when faced with incumbents holding patent portfolios, raising the question why do such Lilliputian firms choose to innovate? In view of this, we study the impact of patent protection on the innovation incentives of startup firms in a dynamic model where an incumbent faces a sequence of potential startups and the incumbent’s chance of winning an infringement lawsuit increases with the size of its patent portfolio. It is shown that open innovation–style takeover deals generate extra benefits for the incumbent via its enhanced future bargaining positions, a part of which accrues to the current startup as an increased bargaining share, justifying R&D activity that would not have taken place otherwise.     

Can Mergers to Monopoly,Price Fixing,and Market‐Division Agreements Raise Welfare?

Naked market division, price fixing agreements and mergers which result in dominant positions have long been opposed by the courts and the government because of the high likelihood that they will result in a reduction in output and an increase in price. We show that the opposite may be true if the market is characterized by marketing spillovers. When marketing investment is required to educate consumers about the general capabilities or qualities of a product, marketing efforts by one producer will benefit rival producers. A theoretical model of these types of markets shows that marketing spillovers can forestall entry altogether or force incumbent firms to engage in ‘limit marketing’ that leaves the market underserved from a welfare‐maximizing perspective. Under these circumstances, market output and social welfare are potentially raised not only through horizontal agreements among competitors, but also through cost‐raising strategies and commitments to predatory behavior by incumbent firms.     

Sunk Costs and the Entry Decision

This paper considers the role of sunk costs in the decision to enter a market. Its goal is to provide a policy-relevant approach to the question: when are sunk costs so great as to serve as a barrier to entry? To do this, the model presented nests both a model of pure hit-and-run entry and a simple “lottery-ticket” model of long-term entry in which the entrant knows that entry may or may not ultimately prove successful. It illustrates clearly the strategic differences between sunk and nonsunk fixed costs. The paper also considers the incumbent’s problem of choosing between entry deterrence and accommodation. Finally, out of this model comes a measure of the height of the sunk cost barrier to entry that may be useful for competition policy purposes.     

Opening the OTC drug market: The effect of deregulation on retail pharmacy’s performance

Governments in many countries have deregulated the retail pharmacy market to offer easier and broader access to pharmacy services. Such deregulation has spurred the competition by allowing the entry of new drug distribution channels. Current research leverages the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law revision introduced in South Korea in November 2012. The policy change allowed 24-hour convenience stores to sell 13 first-aid drugs directly to patients. This research investigates the causal effect of new retailers’ entry on incumbent pharmacies’ financial performance in terms of pricing, revenue, and market exit. The findings, based on the panel data of 2,795 pharmacies in a 36-month period from 2011 to 2013, suggest deregulation posed a significant competitive threat to incumbent pharmacies, resulting in lower average prices for the deregulated drugs, significant drops in revenue and accelerated financial failures. A significant heterogeneity in the treatment effect is found across pharmacies. Pharmacies with less loyal customers and poorer financial performance suffered more after deregulation. Our findings suggest that although such deregulation is intended to enhance consumers’ access to health care, opening the OTC drug market to new retailers may hamper consumers’ access to pharmacy services because of the exit from the market of underperforming incumbents.     

Uniform or spatially differentiated? Pricing Strategies for Information Goods under simultaneous and sequential decision-making in multi-market context

Product pricing has been one of the central issues in the field of marketing and consumer services for managers and researchers alike. However, pricing of information goods has not been paid much attention in literature. For information goods the marginal costs of production and transportation of information goods (online movies, video games, etc.) is almost zero. Hence, the pricing decisions need to be thought of purely in competitive profit maximizing terms. This paper proposes mechanisms for managers to evaluate and base their pricing decisions on rational frameworks that takes into account various situations when they enter a new market and when they are incumbent in a new market. This paper addresses the research gap of spatially differentiated pricing strategy for information goods that has not been studied in literature so far. We create stylized theoretical models under both, sequential and simultaneous decision-making conditions. We determine the equilibrium price and the equilibrium profit for the two firms for each of the four possible scenarios based on their pricing strategies. Our analysis reveals that the dominance of one pricing strategy over the other depends on product differentiation factor capturing joint effect of the product substitutability and consumer's price sensitivity under sequential decision making and the market size along with consumer's price sensitivity for simultaneous decision making. As an extension, we propose a generalized model demonstrating the uniform and spatially differentiated pricing strategies of the firms under simultaneous and sequential selection for multiple domestic and international markets.     

Institutional quality and market selection in the transition to market economy

This paper investigates the impact of institutional quality on the productivity, profitability and survival of new entrants versus those of incumbent firms in a transitional setting, Vietnam. By integrating economic and institutional perspectives, we emphasize the importance of institutional quality in shaping the evolution of industry dynamics. We find that poor institutional quality that acts as institutional buffering for incumbents jeopardizes the Schumpeterian market selection process. In particular, despite being more productive and profitable, new entrants are still more likely to exit than incumbents on average. As a consequence, facing poor institutions, only new entrants with sufficiently high productivity and profitability are able to survive. However, improving institutional quality does not enhance new entrants' survival and entrepreneurial performance; rather, it removes the survival advantage of incumbents and thus reduces the differences in performance and exit hazard between new entrants and incumbents. We investigate this seemingly paradoxical relationship using Vietnamese census data from 2006 to 2013.     

Tie-in contracts with downstream competition

A tie-in contract has frequently come under scrutiny for its role as an exclusionary device. A firm that is a monopolist in a primary market can utilize such contracts to exclude a more efficient rival in a secondary market. When the firms sell through competing retailers, the leveraging firm may offer tie-in contracts to the retailers inducing them to purchase both primary and secondary products entirely from it such that the rival is excluded. We examine whether such tie-in contracts are profitable for an incumbent firm under different conditions of (i) the ability to commit to prices by the upstream firms and (ii) downstream competition among the retailers. We show that when retailers compete in prices, then regardless of whether the entrant is able to commit to its own prices, an exclusionary tie-in strategy is profitable (not profitable) for the incumbent when it is able (unable) to commit to prices. However, when retailers compete in quantities, the entrant’s commitment ability does matter. Specifically, an exclusionary tie-in strategy (i) may be unprofitable for an incumbent when both upstream firms are able to commit to their prices, depending on the degree of cost advantage of the entrant; (ii) is always profitable when it alone can commit to its price; and (iii) is unprofitable when both upstream firms cannot commit to their prices. Our results extend to situations where the products are complementary or substitutes and where the retailers may be asymmetric in nature.     

Exit and Upgrading in Response to Entry: The Case of Gasoline Retailing

Spatial competition models have established the importance of localized competition in determining competitive outcomes. However, few empirical studies attempt to determine to what extent actual local market conditions affect strategic decisions. This paper uses data provided by the acquisition of the Vancouver area Super‐Save chain of retail gasoline stations by ARCO to study the role of geographic space in competition, and the spatial response of the major competitors in the market to entry. The possibility of both accommodating and aggressive capacity responses by the major incumbent firms to entry are considered. While the empirical results show that proximity to ARCO increased the probability that a station shuts down, proximity to ARCO can explain only a limited amount of shutdown after ARCO’s entry. There is no evidence that incumbent firms used station locations and capacity changes to respond aggressively to ARCO’s entry with a spatial predation strategy.     

Creative destruction and regional productivity growth: evidence from the Dutch manufacturing and services industries

Do firm entry and exit improve the competitiveness of regions? If so, is this a universal mechanism or is it contingent on the type of industry or region in which creative destruction takes place? This paper analyses the effect of firm entry and exit on the competitiveness of regions, as measured by total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Based on a study across 40 regions in the Netherlands over the period 1988–2002, we find that firm entry is related to productivity growth in services, but not in manufacturing. The positive impact found in services does not necessarily imply that new firms are more efficient than incumbent firms; high degrees of creative destruction may also improve the efficiency of incumbent firms. We also find that the impact of firm dynamics on regional productivity in services is higher in regions exhibiting diverse but related economic activities.     

Are Intellectual Property Rights Detrimental to Innovation?

Intellectual property rights are legal constraints that limit conditions of entry in industries where incumbents are innovators. The set of legal constraints is the same for all industries, and there is no consideration of the possibility that the externalities created by entry in a given industry may not necessarily be negative for the incumbent, or that the incumbent's R&D expenditures might actually be detrimental to new entrants. We show that one unique set of legal rules can foster innovation in some industries and be detrimental in others. Our model is illustrated by case studies from the Information and Communication Technologies industry.     

Incumbent innovation and domestic entry

This paper analyzes the escape-entry incentive for innovation by incumbent firms. The threat posed by the possibility of leading-edge firms entering the market influences incumbent innovation. To overcome problems of endogeneity, we apply an instrumental variable approach to analyze a rich firm-level dataset (1987–2000) for Germany. We find evidence that domestic entry has a negative effect on incumbent product innovation, which is a strong indication of new entrants’ comparative advantage in commercializing new ideas. In contrast, domestic entry has a positive effect on incumbent process innovations, an effect also known as the escape-entry effect.     

Scale economies,entry, and welfare

This study shows how scale economies, initial size differences among firms, potential competition, and adjustment costs may influence the entry of firms into a dynamic oligopoly. It also examines the effects of these factors on the final size distribution of firms in an industry, and on the welfare levels of consumers and producers. We find that low to moderate scale economies are insufficient for Cournot-Nash competition to drive small firms from the market. Only when scale economies are quite high will the distribution of firm sizes become degenerate. Potential competition and the size of incumbent firms' capital stocks are additional barriers to entry. The welfare conclusion is that there may be a government role to preserve potential competition, but also to dissuade small firms from entering certain markets where there are economies of scale.     

Does easy start-up formation hamper incumbents’ R&D investment?

This paper investigates the implications that complementary assets needed for the formation of start-ups have on the innovative efforts of incumbent firms. In particular, we highlight a strategic incentive effect by which the innovative efforts of incumbents are decreasing in the availability of the complementary assets needed for the creation of a start-up. Furthermore, we argue that the R&D investments of incumbents are positively related to the presence of policy support to innovation, and to the firm’s endowment of human capital. The empirical relevance of our theoretical hypotheses is investigated—and supported—by using firm level data.