Dubois, Pierre and Perrone, Helena
(2015)
Price Dispersion and Informational Frictions: Evidence from Supermarket Purchases.
TSE Working Paper, n. 15-606, Toulouse
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Abstract
Traditional demand models assume that consumers are perfectly informed about product characteristics, including price. However, this assumption may be too strong. Unannounced sales are a common supermarket practice. As we show, retailers frequently change position in the price rankings, thus making it unlikely that consumers are aware of all deals offered in each period. Further empirical evidence on consumer behavior is also consistent with a model with price information frictions. We develop such a model for horizontally differentiated products and structurally estimate the search cost distribution. The results show that in equilibrium, consumers observe a very limited number of prices before making a purchase decision, which implies that imperfect information is indeed important and that local market power is potentially high. We also show that a full information demand model yields severely biased price elasticities.
Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
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Language: | English |
Date: | October 2015 |
Place of Publication: | Toulouse |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | imperfect information, price dispersion, sales, search costs, product dif- ferentiation, consumer behavior, demand estimation, price elasticities |
JEL Classification: | D4 - Market Structure and Pricing D83 - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief L11 - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms L66 - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco |
Subjects: | B- ECONOMIE ET FINANCE |
Divisions: | TSE-R (Toulouse) |
Institution: | Université Toulouse 1 Capitole |
Site: | UT1 |
Date Deposited: | 05 Nov 2015 15:10 |
Last Modified: | 02 Apr 2021 15:50 |
OAI Identifier: | oai:tse-fr.eu:29838 |
URI: | https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/18605 |