Retail Zone Pricing and Simulated Price Effects of Upstream Mergers Academic Article

abstract

• Despite the oft-recognized reality of zone pricing by food retailers, this form of price discrimination has received very little attention within the context of upstream merger analysis. Promoting this issue to 'center stage', we relax the conventional merger simulation assumption of uniform pass-through by retailers. Relaxing this assumption allows us to explore the potential impacts of zone pricing on post-merger price effects. Using the ready-to-eat cereals industry as a backdrop, we show empirically that high-income price zones are more significantly affected by post-merger price increases than low-income price zones. Ignoring retail price discrimination veils a potentially complex and diverse set of price effects that are otherwise lost by averaging across all price zones.

authors

• Capps, Oral

published proceedings

• INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ECONOMICS OF BUSINESS

author list (cited authors)

• Pofahl, G., Capps, O. J., & Love, H.

citation count

• 2

complete list of authors

• Pofahl, Geoffrey||Capps, Oral Jr||Love, H

publication date

• July 2006

publisher

• Taylor & Francis  Publisher

published in

• International Journal of the Economics of Business  Journal

keywords

• La/aids Demand Model
• Merger Simulation
• Retail Price Discrimination

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1080/13571510600784433

start page

• 195

end page

• 215

volume

• 13

issue

• 2

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13571510600784433