1. Spatial competition with demand uncertainty: A laboratory experiment
- Author
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Aurélie Bonein, Stéphane Turolla, Centre de recherche en économie et management (CREM), Université de Caen Normandie (UNICAEN), Normandie Université (NU)-Normandie Université (NU)-Université de Rennes (UR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires (SMART), Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut Agro Rennes Angers, Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro)-Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement (Institut Agro), and Wiley
- Subjects
Economics and Econometrics ,JEL: L - Industrial Organization/L.L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance/L.L1.L13 - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets ,Strategy and Management ,General Medicine ,Product differentiation ,General Business, Management and Accounting ,Laboratory experiment ,JEL: D - Microeconomics/D.D4 - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design/D.D4.D43 - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection ,[SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences ,Demand uncertainty ,Management of Technology and Innovation ,JEL: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods/C.C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory/C.C7.C72 - Noncooperative Games ,JEL: R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics/R.R3 - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location/R.R3.R30 - General ,JEL: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods/C.C9 - Design of Experiments/C.C9.C91 - Laboratory, Individual Behavior ,Risk attitudes - Abstract
International audience; Motivated by recent research on product differentiation, we conduct laboratory experiments to study how demand uncertainty influences firms' incentives to differentiate. We ground our experiment on a discrete version of the standard location-then-price game introduced by \cite{Hotelling_1929}, and we consider different levels of demand uncertainty. We first derive the game equilibrium assuming risk-neutral firms, and obtain the standard prediction that a high level of demand uncertainty generates more differentiation. Second, we extend the analysis to consider non risk-neutral firms and markets with asymmetric risk profiles. We show that the game equilibrium can differ substantially according to the attitude to risk. Third, we compare our predictions with the experimental data and find that demand uncertainty acts as a differentiation force in the context of both symmetric markets composed of risk-neutral or risk-lover subjects and asymmetric markets. We find support also for the agglomeration effect arising from demand uncertainty for sufficiently risk-averse subjects. Overall, these results might explain the opposite product differentiation strategies frequently observed in markets with fast-evolving tastes (i.e. minimum or maximum differentiation). Finally, the data confirm that subjects differentiate to relax price competition and provide evidence of a strong positive relationship between differentiation and prices.
- Published
- 2023