Product differentiation and populistic entry strategies in a mortgage market with Bertrand competition

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the interaction between a profit maximising mortgagor and a newcomer to a mortgage market with Bertrand competition where the newcomer has a populistic entry strategy and undercuts mortgage market rates. The intention of the paper is to relate the populistic entry strategy to mortgage market characteristics and the strategic market position of both the established mortgagor and the newcomer in question.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses a mortgage market by combining the behaviour of a profit maximising mortgagor with that of a newcomer to the mortgage market which has a populistic entry strategy and does not maximise profits. The short-run market solution provides comparative statics on the strategic market position of both the established mortgagor and the newcomer to the mortgage market during the entry phase both related to product differentiation and to price mirroring and undercutting of mortgage rates.FindingsThe model finds a mortgage market solution where a lower mortgage rate helps the newcomer gain a customer base. As the newcomer's strategy to mirror prices makes it unable to pass-through funding cost to its mortgage rate, the strategy is unsustainable over time. The established mortgagor has a strategically beneficial position as the mortgage market rates only relate to its funding cost. Unless the newcomer has a funding cost advantage, the established mortgagor has a higher interest rate margin. Differentiation impacts the newcomers’ interest rate margin positively. If the newcomer lacks a funding cost advantage, there is a critical mirroring rate that ensures it a higher interest rate margin. The higher the newcomers’ own funding cost, the higher is the upper bound for price mirroring, relating market entry to a small undercutting of mortgage rates and a mortgage market with weak competition. The funding cost of the established mortgagor pulls pricing in the opposite direction, allowing for a lower mirroring rate and tougher mortgage market competition during entry.Originality/valueThe paper aims to contribute to the understanding of market equilibrium in the absence of profit maximising behaviour. Framing a mortgage market in terms of a duopoly where a newcomer enters with a populistic entry strategy offering a lower mortgage rate and a mortgage product with a different loan-to-value (LTV) ratio, a novel mortgage market case comes about. The populistic entry strategy produces an augmented reaction curve, crucial for the mortgage market rates.

Endogenous Expectations Management with Network Effects: A Note

We examine the endogenous choice of commitment device to consumers’ expectations with network effects. Under Cournot competition, we show that choosing commitment to expectations for each firm is a dominant strategy regardless of the strength of network effects. However, under Bertrand competition, three types of commitment with both/no commitment/multiple emerge in equilibrium depending on the strength of network effects. Thus, we obtain different Pareto efficiency between Bertrand and Cournot competition, depending on the intensity of competition.

Brand premia driven by perceived vertical differentiation in markets with information disparity and optimistic consumers

We have considered a duopoly with perceived vertical differentiation, information disparity and optimistic consumers. When firms compete for informed and uninformed consumers, the former contribute to raise product quality, while equilibrium prices increase with optimistic misperception of the latter, in our first equilibrium. Brand premium includes a quality premium and a misperception rent. In our second equilibrium, informed consumers buy low-quality goods and minimum product differentiation without Bertrand competition occurs. The brand premium is just a misperception rent, however, an increase of the informed consumers share implies price re-balancing and rent reduction. Consumers externalities arise in both equilibria. Firms compete only for informed consumers within our third and fourth equilibrium, as uninformed ones are passive and represent a captive market. Uninformed consumers in one case are overoptimistic, they buy the high quality good and can be cheated in equilibrium. Uninformed consumers approach the real quality differential in the fourth equilibrium, and the model reduces to standard vertical differentiation with perfect information.

Oligopolistic Price Leadership and Mergers: The United States Beer Industry

We study a repeated game of price leadership in which a firm proposes supermarkups over Bertrand prices to a coalition of rivals. Supermarkups and marginal costs are recoverable from data on prices and quantities using the model’s structure. In an application to the beer industry, we find that price leadership increases profit relative to Bertrand competition by 17 percent in fiscal years 2006 and 2007, and by 22 percent in 2010 and 2011, with the change mostly due to consolidation. We simulate two mergers, which relax binding incentive compatibility constraints and increase supermarkups. These coordinated effects arise even with efficiencies that offset price increases under Bertrand competition. (JEL G34, K21, L13, L14, L41, L66)

Analysis and Application of Salop Model under Network Effect

Based on Salop’s ring city model, this paper applies the mathematical model to solve the problem of benefit game about Bertrand competition under the environment of network effect. The equilibrium solutions for both players are given in this paper, and the equilibrium solution of Salop’s ring city model depends on the effect of network externalities. The magnitude of network externalities determines the changes in welfare.

How Retailer Co-Opetition Impacts Pricing, Collecting and Coordination in a Closed-Loop Supply Chain

The cooperative and competitive (i.e., co-opetition) behavior between retailers plays a significant role in the development of operations and marketing strategies in a supply chain. Specifically, retailers’ co-opetition relationship pivotally influences the sustainable performance in a closed-loop supply chain. This study examines the impact of retailer co-opetition on pricing, collection decisions and coordination in a closed-loop supply chain with one manufacturer and two competing retailers. Based on observations in some industries (e.g., electronic manufacturing, fabric and textile, etc.), the cooperative and competitive relationships between retailers can be classified into the following three different modes: Bertrand competition, Stackelberg competition, and Collusion. In this paper, we establish a centralized and three decentralized game-theoretic models under these three co-opetition modes and characterize the corresponding equilibrium outcomes. The results indicate that the Bertrand competition mode yields the highest return rate, which is also superior to the other two modes for both the manufacturer and the supply chain system in terms of profitability. However, it can be shown that which mode benefits the retailers would depend on the degree of competition between the retailers and the relative remanufacturing efficiency. Interestingly, we find that the retailer’s first-move advantage does not necessarily lead to higher profits. In addition, we design a modified two-part tariff contract to coordinate the decentralized closed-loop supply chains under three different retailer co-opetition modes, and the results suggest that the optimal contractual parameters in the contracts highly rely on the remanufacturing efficiency and the competition degree between the two retailers. Several managerial insights for firms, consumers and policy makers are provided through numerical analysis.

Retail outsourcing strategy in Cournot & Bertrand retail competitions with economies of scale

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This paper investigates a manufacturer's retail outsourcing strategies under different competition modes with economies of scale. We focus on the effects of market competition modes, economies of scale and competitor's behavior on manufacturer's retail outsourcing decisions, and then we develop four game models under three competition modes. Firstly, we find the channel structure where both manufacturers choose retail outsourcing cannot be an equilibrium structure under the Cournot competition. The Cournot competition mode is less profitable to the firm than the Bertrand competition when the products are complements. Secondly, under the hybrid Cournot-Bertrand competition mode, there is only one equilibrium supply chain structure where neither manufacturer chooses retail outsourcing, when the substitutability and complementarity levels are not sufficiently high. In addition, setting price (quantity) contracts as the strategic variables is the dominant strategy for the direct-sale manufacturer who provides complementary (substitutable) products. Thirdly, both competitive firms will benefit from the situation where they choose the same competition mode. When the products are substitutes (complements), both of them choose the Cournot (Bertrand) competition mode. Finally, we show that the economies of scale have little impact on the equilibrium of the outsourcing structure but a great impact on the competition mode equilibrium.</p>