Author: Anna W. LuPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Three Essays on Empirical Industrial Organization in Grocery Retailing
Author: Anna W. LuThree Essays on Empirical Industrial Organization in Grocery Retailing
Author: Anna LuThree Essays in Empirical Industrial Organization
Author: Maria Andrea Martens OlivaresPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Three Essays in Empirical Industrial Organization
Author: Matthew ShumEssays on Industrial Organization
Author: Oleksii KhvastunovPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
This dissertation investigates spatial competition between grocery retailers in the U.S. and grocery consumption patterns of households. It is organized as follows: In chapter one, I analyzed spatial competition between grocery retailers and importance of club stores for the grocery industry. In chapter two, I implemented structural demand model to understand determinants of household consumption in terms of healthiness. In chapter three, I used reduced form approach to investigate the importance of access to grocery stores for quantity and quality of household's consumption.
Three Essays in Empirical Industrial Organization
Author: Abraham C. DunnPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
There are many differentiated product industries in which firms offer multiple products in the same market. In making strategic decisions regarding entry, quality and quantity to be supplied for their multiple products firms must consider the competition with rivals as well as cannibalization of their own products that are close substitutes. In this setting, understanding the relationship between the behavior of consumer demand and firms decisions' regarding product characteristics and strategic variables like advertising are fundamental issues in industrial organization. This dissertation empirically explores these fundamental issues in the pharmaceutical and airline industries. The first paper of my dissertation estimates consumer demand for different anti-cholesterol drugs using panel data on a nationally representative sample of individuals who were diagnosed with cholesterol problems in the period 1996-2002. The data provides detailed information on individuals' medical conditions, medical and drug insurance coverage, drug purchases (if any), and other demographic and medical information. Individuals choose whether to purchase an anti-cholesterol rug and, if so, which drug to buy. The model permits flexible substitution patterns among drug choices and persistence in those choices by incorporating both observed and unobserved consumer heterogeneity. The estimates suggest that lower income patients without prescription drug insurance are very price sensitive: they are less likely to use drugs and, if they do use them, they tend to purchase the less expensive drugs. I find that roughly 500 thousand individuals without drug insurance who are currently not purchasing anti-cholesterol drugs would do so in the counterfactual world in which they are given the standard co-payment plan. The second paper also looks at consumer demands for anti-cholesterol drugs. While the first paper focused on the differentiated products, this paper explores the market expansion effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). The study combines the individual data used in the first paper with monthly expenditure data on DTCA for the period 1996-2002. The dynamic demand model estimated in this paper explores the heterogeneous effects of DTCA. Overall, I find a positive effect from DTCA with short term elasticity of 0.107. Through persistence in consumer demand this effect lasts over multiple time periods. I find that individuals not taking a cholesterol drug respond more to advertising than those on the drug. In addition, I find that less educated individuals, those that may be unaware of their health condition, and those without health insurance are most responsive to DTCA. Finally, the third paper studies the effect of product ownership and quality on entry in the airline industry. Specifically, this paper empirically examines the decision of an airline to offer high quality nonstop service between cities given that the airline may or may not be offering lower quality one-stop service. I find that airlines that offer one-stop service through a hub are less likely to enter that same market with nonstop service than those that do not. In addition, the quality of the one-stop service is another determinant of entry. Airlines are more likely to enter a market with nonstop service if their own or their rival's one-stop service in the market are of lower quality.
Three Essays on Empirical Industrial Organization
Author: Amela Saric-BabinEssays on the Industrial Organization of Food Retailing
Author: Tiffany ShihPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
Book Description
This thesis consists of two empirical studies of the industrial organization of food retailing. Chapter 1 investigates consumer behavior in response to changes in variety in grocery store offerings. Using a rich panel dataset of consumer purchases from one national retailer, we measure the effects of changes in product variety on sales of ice cream, where the assortment changes were gradually introduced to stores. We use a difference in differences approach to measure treatment effects against trends in stores prior to treatment. Our results show an adjustment to product variety causes consumers to alter their purchasing behavior, at least in the subsequent eight weeks of the change. When the rearrangement consisted of adding additional products, consumers purchased more on average in the immediate term, but sales increases mitigated over time, with smaller magnitude increases in variety experiencing sales reductions in later weeks. Product groups treated with reduced variety experienced decreased sales both in the immediate and longer term. We find that extending and reducing assortment have asymmetric effects, with a marginal change to increased variety boosting sales less than a marginal change in decreased variety. Larger magnitude reductions perform poorly in the short run, but actually perform better than both smaller variety reductions and small variety increases in later weeks. In Chapter 2, I investigate the following question: do firms respond to quality disclosure by nearby competitors? This paper utilizes exogenous variation provided by Los Angeles County's introduction of restaurant hygiene grade cards to explore inter-firm responses in markets for differentiated goods. Under this program, a subset of cities adopted mandatory grade card posting, requiring restaurants to disclose hygiene. This study demonstrates that restaurants under a voluntary hygiene disclosure policy improved hygiene more when located closer to restaurants in mandatory disclosure areas. The proximity effect implies that mandatory disclosure policies influenced restaurant hygiene in nearby voluntary disclosure areas, thus providing direct evidence that quality-disclosure regulations affect non-targeted firms.
Essays in Empirical Industrial Organization: Applications of Structural Models in the Retailing Industry
Author: Marco KotschedoffEssays On the Empirical Analysis of Grocery Retailing and Consumer Shopping Behavior
Author: Jorge Florez AcostaPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This dissertation consists of three essays on the empirical analysis of grocery retailing and consumer shopping behavior. The first chapter focuses on supermarket loyalty programs and their impact on the demand for private labels. Supermarkets often link loyalty rewards to private label purchases, What are supermarkets' motivations to do this? This empirically examines this link using scanner data on grocery purchases of French households and structural methods of demand estimation. Results are consistent with the industry lore: private labels are less valued products relative to quality-equivalent national brands. However, members of loyalty programs have a larger valuation of private labels than non-members. Moreover, the more prone to subscribe to LPs a customer is, the larger her sensitivity to a price increase and the weaker the expected effects on the demand for private labels. The second chapter, joint with Daniel Herrera Araujo, is inspired by a number of theory papers showing that when shopping costs, that rationalize the observed heterogeneity in consumer shopping patterns, are introduced in economic analysis, policy conclusions can change dramatically. We structurally identify consumer shopping costs using scanner data on grocery purchases of French households. We present a model of demand for multiple stores and products consisting of an optimal stopping problem in terms of individual shopping costs. This rule determines whether to visit one or multiple stores at a shopping period. We then estimate the parameters of the model and recover the distribution of shopping costs. We quantify the total shopping cost in 18.7 € per store sourced on average. This cost has two components, namely, the mean fixed shopping cost, 1.53 € and mean total transport cost of 17.1 € per trip. The third chapter empirically examines the role of nonlinear contracts between manufacturers and retail stores, and Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) on nominal price stability. According to the literature the incomplete transmission of costs shocks into retail prices is explained by the existence of markup adjustment and price adjustment costs. The vertical conduct of the industry and the use of RPM can introduce further price stickiness or reinforce it. I present a structural model of vertical relations allowing for two-part tariffs and RPM, and accounting explicitly for retail price rigidity by including fixed costs of price adjustment in retailer's profit function. Using micro data on sales of breakfast cereals from a large supermarket chain in Chicago, I estimate demand, retrieve margins, and compute bounds for retail price adjustment costs. I find that these costs lie between 1.6% and 3% of its total revenue a year, on average.