外文翻译--连锁店的定价策略

1、 原文Chain-Store Pricing for Strategic AccommodationThe chain store has been one of the principal factors in the movement towards the simplification of distributive functions As such it has caused pronounced concern among manufactures jobbers and retailers It has been the subject of litigation of recr

2、imination and of endless discussion The manufacturer has hesitated to make full use of the chain store system as an outlet because of his desire not to offend the members of his regular distributive systems The jobber has made open war upon the chain because it has frankly attempted to supplant him

3、and to independent retailer has often failed to recognize the decisive line of division between price merchandising and service merchandisingEvery concern which ultimately markets its products to the consumer is vitally affected by the status of chain retailing more particularly with the position wh

4、ich it will occupy in the future The following pages contain a brief resume of the present chain store situation in the fields of retailing where it has become well establishedTrends of developmentThe most rapid growth of the chain store has taken place in the grocery drug dry goods tobacco and conf

5、ectionery lines It is essential to understand the reasons for thisThe public demand in these lines is well defined is not subject to great fluctuation in times of business depression and in each case there is a repeat marketThe articles handled fall mainly in the class of necessities or semi-necessi

6、ties That is they are regarded as essential by a proportion of the market large enough to insure a steady demandBecause of the standard character of the stocks and the broad demand a high rate of turnover may be maintained which allows the chain to make a small but steady margin of profit at frequen

7、t intervalsBuying or purchasing is standardized and centralized at headquartersSince articles are of small unit value and not bulky or heavy the chain store is able to operate on a cash and carry basis-a factor of great importance in chain store growthMerchandising is largely a matter of display and

8、 price advertisingStandardization of methods has made it possible to centralize management at headquarters and control member stores under managers who while they may have a pecuniary interest in sales made by their stores have nothing to say about the conducting of themOur analytic focus in this pa

9、per is the geographic scope of pricing Specifically is it better for a chain-store retailer to set prices according to local market conditions reflecting differences in cost demand and competition or set common prices that apply across all its stores ie adopt a uniform pricing policy Are likely firm

10、 decisions on this in line with consumer preferences In contrast to the entry deterrence issue considered by Selten 1978 Milgrom and Roberts 1982 and Kreps and Wilson 1982 we look to see whether pricing policy other than deterring entry might instead be employed strategically to accommodate entry wh

11、en it is inevitable The geographic scope for pricing is a very real issue for multiple retailers It is evident that in practice some chain-store groups adopt uniform pricing while others do not In some sectors all multiple retailers price identically across their stores eg UK electrical goods retail

12、ers MMC 1997ab While in other sectors local pricing is practised to the extent that product prices might vary considerably from one store to another eg the FTC found that for office supply superstores average prices varied by as much 16 depending on the extent of local competition in the US Moreover

13、 this pricing policy distinction applies not just to different sectors but can apply within the same sector eg amongst UK supermarkets where of the leading fifteen groups eight priced uniformly while seven priced according to local conditions Competition Commission 2000 Yet in these days of computer

14、-based pricing systems it can hardly be said that ticketing costs are high or that local demand and cost conditions cannot be effectively gauged Hence choosing a uniform price must be seen as a conscious act Of course uniform pricing might not be practicable when retailing costs are substantially di

15、fferent from one area to another Nevertheless for many multiple retailers both local and uniform pricing might be feasible but a choice has to be made on which to adopt This leads to two questions first why it might ever be preferable for the incumbent to impose a constraint on its own behaviour and

16、 second the circumstances under which the constraint is desirable Our key insight on the first question is as follows A firm will find itself more under competition in some markets than others By practicing uniform pricing it softens competition between itself and rival players This entails setting

17、a higher price in those markets subject to more competition at the expense of lower prices in markets where it is not subject or is less subject to competition compared with a practice of market-specific pricing The higher price in turn makes the action one which rivals find attractive so it does no

18、t require agreement Thus if the markets under competition are important enough to the firm its net gain is positive Hence our papers prime focus is on the parameters associated with the nature and intensity of competition that might influence this choice There is some commonality in this issue with

19、related questions on third-degree price discrimination in oligopoly eg Holmes 1989 More specifically the issues raised here tie in with why oligopolistic firms would wish to limit or even entirely avoid price discrimination eg Winter 1997 and Corts 1998 or adopt practices which provide the same outc

20、ome notably contemporaneous MFC clauses eg DeGraba 1987 and Besanko and Lyon 1993 There are obvious links between our paper and Corts 1998 which also considers the question of uniform versus discriminatory pricing under duopoly within a rather different framework However in Corts model it turns out

21、that it is usually not in a firms unilateral interest to practise uniform pricing Therefore where uniform pricing is profitable strategic commitments not to price discriminate are normally involved and hence discussion focuses on the form these might take By contrast within our framework and for a s

22、pecified range of parameters we find that it is in the firms own interest not to discriminate and that uniform pricing arises as an equilibrium strategy This is important and provides a new insight because it means that uniform pricing need not be accompanied by evidence of strategic commitment to t

23、hat policy in order for it to be worthwhile and practised 1 IntroductionOur result that firms can commonly be better off under a uniform pricing regime casts an interesting light on some other previous models The result is not new - it was first encountered in Holmes 1989 weak market-strong market m

24、odel of price discrimination in oligopoly However in their investigation of a model similar to Holmes Armstrong and Vickers 2001 find that if a market is sufficiently competitive profits always increase with discrimination This leads them to conclude that Holmes result that profits may fall with dis

25、crimination requires markets to be reasonably uncompetitive p 597 Our model shows this is not completely true In our framework which in effect has a weak and a strong market profits may fall with discrimination whatever the degree of competition That is however uncompetitive the market uniform prici

26、ng can be profitable What is required for this is each individual monopoly market in our context to be sufficiently largeTo consider how different competitive conditions affect the scope-of-pricing decision the model developed here has an incumbent monopoly chain-store operating across a finite numb

27、er of local markets analogous to Seltens well-known chain-store paradox analysis However in contrast to Seltens framework these local markets are assumed to differ in respect of the scale of consumer demand and this in turn affects entry conditions There are two market types In each of the larger af

28、fluent markets entry barriers are insufficient to prevent entry by a new independent rival Yet in smaller less affluent markets the chain-store is taken to have a protected monopoly position arising from natural or institutional barriers In this setting we show that a chain-store would not necessari

29、ly prefer to use local pricing as a profit-enhancing price discrimination tool Competitive conditions exist in the form of a region trading off the degree of substitutability between entrant and incumbents products and the degree to which duopoly markets are larger than monopoly markets Under these

30、conditions the chain-store would prefer to commit to a policy of uniform pricing since this allows for softer competition in contested local markets and hence raises its aggregate profits While the prospect of strategic accommodation through dampening price competition influences the preference betw

31、een local or national pricing a chain-stores choice is not inevitably at variance with that preferred by society In particular a stores willingness to commit to national pricing can in certain circumstances not only enhance its profits but also raise social welfare if not consumer surplus Yet market

32、 conditions commonly exist under which welfare would be adversely affected by the chain-store following its preferred choice Although our model is undoubtedly specific the results are considerably more general Our general results are 1 that under a range of conditions including very competitive mark

33、ets uniform pricing is privately optimal both for incumbent and entrant without co-ordination and 2 that enforcing uniform pricing where firms would prefer local pricing by no means necessarily advances social welfare The significance of the first is that existing papers have concentrated heavily on

34、 co-ordinated action on uniform pricing By contrast policy has often focused on whether firms practice uniform pricing viewing this with approval something in conflict with our second point The remainder of the paper is organised as follows Section 2 discusses the analytical framework whereby an inc

35、umbent chain-store retailer faces certain entry in a fixed number of its local monopoly markets As with the original Selten story entry into such contested markets is in each case by an independent non-affiliated local retailer Section 3 then examines and compares the outcomes where the chain-store

36、uses local pricing against where it adopts a uniform national pricing approach Section 4 addresses consumer welfare considerations Section 5 concludes the paper2 The FrameworkFollowing Selten and others we consider the situation of a chain-store retailer holding a monopoly position in a finite numbe

37、r of independent local markets In each market there is one potential entrant should that firm enter post-entry competition would be characterised by the Bertrand-Nash outcome in a duopoly pricing game Complete information applies and it is assumed that the incumbent has no cost or demand advantage o

38、ver the entrant or vice versa In this situation entry is inevitable in each local market when entry costs are low at least when there is some minimal differentiation between the firms allowing for positive returns for the entrant and when there are no institutional impediments such as planning restr

39、ictions that prevent new stores being opened However if entry costs are substantial or there are no available sites then the local market is blockaded and entry does not occur Our key departure from the previous literature is that we allow entry not be viable in all local markets That is for the N m

40、arkets originally held by the chain-store we assume that M N are blockaded or otherwise provide insufficient demand for two firms but that the remainder C N M can become contested by virtue of becoming local duopolies The relevance of this assumption will become apparent from the analysis We have a

41、two-stage game depicted in Figure 1 In the first stage each entrant simultaneously decides whether or not to enter we illustrate with only two markets and potential entrants Then in the second stage the incumbent decides pricing policy whether to practice local L or uniform U pricing There is no com

42、mitment stage The equilibrium concept is subgame perfection Hence in determining its move the entrant eg E1 knows the payoffs facing the incumbent I as its aggregated profits PI knows that the incumbent will choose the path that is the more profitable However because an entrant does not know how man

43、y other entrants will enter for certain given simultaneous entry moves it will not necessarily know whether the incumbent will practise local or uniform pricingSource Paul W Dobson and Michael Waterson April 2003Chain-Store Pricing for Strategic Accommodation The university of warwick Department of

44、Economica in its series The Wateick Economics Research Paper Series TWERPS with number 677 PP1-4译文连锁店的定价策略市场环境的变动对连锁店分布主要因素之一引起已主体成为没完没了的讨论制造商充分利用连锁店系统作为出口价格商品销售和服务的销售活动每个关心最终市场的产品给消费者都会受到连锁店状态重大的影响特别是未来将会占有的分布情况本文以下的内容包括一个简短的摘要以说明目前连锁店在连锁业领域的发展情况以及它将会有什么样好的建设发展趋势连锁店的快速增长发生在杂货店药物干货烟草和糖果行至关重要的原因1在这些行

45、中公共需求不受经济不景气的时候业务有一个重复的市场文章主们被认为是基本的市场中所占比例足够大以确保稳定的需求3由于存货的标准特征为储备和广泛的需求保持了很高的流动比率从而允许连锁店一个规模但稳定的盈利 购买或购买标准化集中在总部 购货很大程度上是一种示和价格广告标准化的方法有可能集中在总部的管理和控制下经理人本分析重点地域定价范围具体地说是零售商连锁店更好根据当地市场条件价格 反不同的成本需求和竞争 或在所有申请店面建立的价格即采用一个统一的定价政策公司这个决定符合消费者的喜好泽尔滕 1978 尔格姆和罗伯茨 1982 年 和和威尔逊 1982 问题相比我们想看看否定价政策上威慑条目 可能相反

46、的时候使用以适应不可避免多零售商地域范围的价格是很实际的问题实际上很明显是某连锁业采用统一的定价但却不会在某些领域所有的多个零售商的价格一致例如在英国零售商的商店而在其他的行业当地的定价从一家商店到另一在产品价格可能相差很大贸易委员会发现对于办公用品平均价格修改16取决于在美国本地竞争的程度各不相同这种价格政策不仅适用于区别不同部门申请在相同的部门 例如在英国超级市场的位置十五的八个价格统一而七定价根据当地条件竞争委员会 2000年 然而 基于计算机的定价系统的天可以几乎说成是票务成本很高或本地需求和成本条件不能有效地衡量因此选择一个统一的价格必须看作是一种有意识的行为当然当零售成本从一个地方到另一个地方还完全不同的统一的定价不过对于很多零售商行得通不过要采用上出的一种选择这会导致出现两个问题 首先为什么它可能永远受现任征收而抑制自己的行为其次在某些情况下约束是可取的我们对第一个问题的关键性认知如下一个公司将会发现自己在市场竞争中比其他通过实践统一定价使与竞争对手之间的竞争变得这就意味着在那些竞争市场中要树立高的价格特定市场的定价的做法较低的价格不受市场反过来更高的价格竞争对手所以它不需要协议因此是否足够重要的是该公司在市场竞争条件下其公司净收益是正的的主要重点可能会影响这种选择参数在寡头垄断这一问