Pure Component Pricing in a Duopoly.

In this paper, we focus on price competition between several multiproduct firms which produce differentiated systems, each consisting of two complementary products. It is shown here that if firms are restricted to pure component pricing (bundling is not allowed) whenever components produced are compatible, pure strategy equilibrium may not exist. With the use of bundling strategies, pure strategy equilibrium always exists. For the pure component pricing case we provide a full characterization for the existence of a pure strategy equilibrium. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester