Grocery retailing is undergoing rapid changes. New store formats and market channels, the entry of additional large players, and increasing multichannel activities on the supply side are accompanied by heterogeneous and changing consumer preferences. Retailers are increasingly competing in both...

We present a model to explain why a manufacturer may impose a minimum resale price (min RPM) in a successive monopoly setting. Our argument relies on the retailer having non-contractible choice variables, which could represent the price of a substitute good and/or the effort the retailer exerts...

Felix Rützel’s assessment of algorithmic price discrimination focuses on the connections between various areas of law. By outlining the existing legal frameworks for each and pinpointing where changes need to be made in order to react to this pricing strategy, the author’s analysis offers...

This paper characterizes fueling stations' pricing strategies to study price differentials within retail gasoline markets. We use a unique dataset with stations' locations and daily gasoline prices in the major cities of the continental U.S. to classify cycler and non-cycler stations. We exploit...

We provide a novel theory of harm for resale price maintenance (RPM). In a model with two manufacturers and two retailers, we show that RPM facilitates manufacturer collusion when retailers have alternatives to selling a manufacturer's product. Because of the alternatives, manufacturers can only...

Using data gathered through web scraping techniques, this paper characterizes product categories' frequency, size and dispersion of price changes in eight retail chains in Mexico, and compare them with price statistics stemming from brick and mortar stores data of the same retailers. Notably,...

We study the price rigidity of regular and sale prices, and how it is affected by pricing formats (i.e., pricing strategies). We use data from three large Canadian stores with different pricing formats (Every-Day-Low-Price, Hi-Lo, and Hybrid) that are located within a 1 km radius of each other....

A growing empirical literature finds that firms pass the cost of minimum wage hikes onto consumers via higher retail prices. Yet, little is known about minimum wage effects on wholesale prices and whether retailers face a wholesale cost shock in addition to the labor cost shock. I exploit the...

We analyze a sample of consumer-electronics products sold by the US NewEgg online-retailer to study the impact of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) policies on prices. By applying aDifference-in-Differences approach,we find that prices of the policy-adopting retailer increase by 4.7% during the...

Through private labels, retailers typically provide their customers access to products that are cheaper than national brands. But how large (if any) are the discounts the shoppers receive for private labels relative to national brands in online grocery markets? Using the case of Walmart’s...

This paper studies how the opening of a Million Dollar Plant (MDP) affects income inequality, by focusing on a new mechanism: retail inflation. Using detailed barcode-level prices, the paper shows that local barcode-level prices increased in winning counties compared to runner up counties after...

Purpose - This study aims to reveal the impact of consumers' price sensitivity on their purchase intention within the scope of supermarkets. Besides, the study aims to examine the impact of consumers' price sensitivity on their price perception level and emotions and the impact of consumers'...

"Hard discounters" are retail formats that set retail food prices even lower than existing discount formats, such as Walmart and Target. Offering limited assortments and focusing on store-brands, these formats promise to change the competitive landscape of food retailing. In this paper, we study...

This paper studies how the opening of a Million Dollar Plant (MDP) affects income inequality, by focusing on a new mechanism: retail inflation. Using detailed barcode-level prices, the paper shows that local barcode-level prices increased in winning counties compared to runner up counties after...

We study different notions of sale and regular prices, and their variability with store pricing-formats. We use data from three large stores with different pricing-formats (EDLP/Hi-Lo/Hybrid) that are located within 1-km radius. Importantly, the data contain both the actual transaction prices...

This paper analyzes the competitive interplay of prices amongst retail channels: offline (brick-and-mortar) and online (such as retailers’ websites and online marketplaces). We find evidence of a close competitive relationship between the two channels, in which prices correspond tightly across...

In this paper we investigate the size of markups for nationally branded products sold in the U.S. retail grocery industry. Using scanner data from a large Midwestern supermarket chain, we compute several measures of upper and lower bounds on markup ratios for over 230 nationally branded products...

This paper characterizes fueling stations' pricing strategies to study price differentials within retail gasoline markets. We use a unique dataset with stations' locations and daily gasoline prices in the major cities of the continental U.S. to classify cycler and non-cycler stations. We exploit...

We document racial differences in retail prices paid for physically identical products. Black households pay 2.0 percent higher prices than white households, and Hispanic households pay 0.8 percent higher prices. This difference suggest that conventional measures of racial income differences...

This paper studies a duopolistic market consisting of a conventional offline retailer and an online retailer, each of whom offers a competing benefit (attribute): Specifically, the conventional retailer is superior in terms of social aspects of the shopping experience, such as helpfulness of...

Online shopping has been expanding rapidly in the past decade. At the same time, recent studies suggest that prices of physical stores are becoming more flexible. What are the effects of online competition on the pricing behavior of traditional retailers? I start by providing empirical evidence...

This paper studies the effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on retail prices in the United States. State-level program adjustments motivate the identification strategy. A 1 percent increase in benefits per population raises grocery prices by a persistent 0.08 percent. A...

This paper studies the effects of misspecified boundaries of competition on optimal retail pricing using store-level supermarket scanner data. We focus on two types of misspecification: (i) misspecification of the demand estimation problem, which can arise from either defining the product market...

This paper characterizes fueling stations' pricing strategies to study price variation within retail gasoline markets. We use a unique dataset with stations' locations and daily gasoline prices in the major cities of the continental U.S. to classify cycler and non-cycler stations. We exploit...

This paper investigates two coordination mechanisms in a simple distribution channel: 1) the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) and 2) the minimum advertised price (MAP). With a MSRP, the retailer can engage in a price discount policy to maintain control of the selling price. With a...

We study the impact of the Belgium lockdown on retail prices using a unique dataset tracking daily prices and promotions for various products in different stores and retail chains. Two distinctive features of our analysis are the ban on promotions during the first two weeks of the lockdown, and...

Using a unique data set on store-level monthly prices of four homogenous products sold in Israel, I study the existence and characteristics of the dispersion of prices across stores, as well as its persistence over time. I find that price dispersion prevails even after controlling for observed...

This paper uses detailed data on retail pharmacy transactions to make inferences about the nature and intensity of consumer search for prescription drugs. Prescription prices exhibit patterns that should, in principle, induce search: in particular, prices vary widely across stores, and stores'...

We examine the retail prices and wholesale prices of a large supermarket chain in Chicago over seven and one-half years. We show that prices tend to fall during the seasonal demand peak for a product and that changes in retail margins account for most of those price changes; thus we add to the...

Hausman (2003) discusses four sources of bias in the present calculation of the CPI. A pure price' index based approach of surveying prices as done by the BLS cannot succeed in solving the problems of bias. We discuss economic and econometric approaches to measuring the first order bias effects...

This paper tests for price patterns in retail gasoline markets consistent with those predicted by models of implicit collusion among firms. Recent supergame models show that the highest supportable collusive price is a function of today's profit relative to expected future profit: collusive...

For many products the average price paid by consumers falls during periods of high demand. We use information from a large supermarket chain to decompose the decrease in the average price into a substitution effect, due to an increase in the share of cheaper products, and a price reduction...

This paper documents patterns of price setting at the retail level in the euro area, summarized in six stylized facts. First, the average euro area monthly frequency of price adjustment is 15 p.c., compared to about 25 p.c. in the US. Second, the frequency of price changes is characterized by...