REVISION: The Joint Identification of Utility and Discount Functions from Stated Choice Data: An Application t
Date Posted: Nov 19, 2012
We present a survey design that generalizes static conjoint experiments to elicit inter-temporal adoption decisions for durable goods. We show that consumers’ utility and discount functions in a dynamic discrete choice model are jointly identified using data generated by this specific design. In contrast, based on revealed preference data, the utility and discount functions are generally not jointly identified even if consumers’ expectations are known. The separation of current-period prefer
REVISION: Improving the Numerical Performance of BLP Static and Dynamic Discrete Choice Random Coefficients De
Date Posted: Dec 31, 2011
The widely-used estimator of Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (1995) produces estimates of consumer preferences from a discrete-choice demand model with random coefficients, market-level demand shocks and endogenous prices. We derive numerical theory results characterizing the properties of the nested fixed point algorithm used to evaluate the objective function of BLP's estimator. We discuss problems with typical implementations, including cases that can lead to incorrect parameter estimates. As a so
REVISION: State Dependence and Alternative Explanations for Consumer Inertia
Date Posted: Apr 14, 2010
For many consumer packaged goods products, researchers have documented inertia in brand choice, a form of persistence whereby consumers have a higher probability of choosing a product that they have purchased in the past. Using data on margarine and refrigerated orange juice purchases, we show that the finding of inertia is robust to flexible controls for preference heterogeneity and not due to autocorrelated taste shocks. Thus, the inertia is at least partly due to structural, not spurious stat
REVISION: Do DVRs Influence Sales?
Date Posted: Jan 30, 2010
We analyze a multimillion dollar, three-year field study sponsored by five firms to assess whether DVRs impact consumers’ shopping behavior for advertised and private label goods. A large sample of households received an offer for a free DVR and service and close to 20% accepted. We observe each household's shopping history for 48 consumer packaged goods categories during the 13 months prior and the 26 months following the DVR offer. We fail to reject the null of no DVR treatment effect on house
New: Improving the Numerical Performance of BLP Static and Dynamic Discrete Choice Random Coefficients De...
Date Posted: Jun 12, 2009
The widely-used estimator of Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (1995) produces estimates of consumer preferences from a discrete-choice demand model with random coefficients, market-level demand shocks and endogenous prices. We derive numerical theory results characterizing the properties of the nested fixed point algorithm used to evaluate the objective function of BLP's estimator. We discuss problems with typical implementations, including cases that can lead to incorrect parameter estimates. As a so
New: State Dependence and Alternative Explanations for Consumer Inertia
Date Posted: Apr 29, 2009
For many consumer packaged goods products, researchers have documented a form of state dependence whereby consumers become loyal to products they have consumed in the past. That is, consumers behave as though there is a utility premium from continuing to purchase the same product as they have purchased in the past or, equivalently, there is a psychological cost to switching products. However, it has not been established that this form of state dependence can be identified in the presence of cons
REVISION: Brand History, Geography, and the Persistence of Brand Shares
Date Posted: Feb 12, 2009
We study persistence in the geographic variation in market shares of branded goods in consumer packaged goods industries across 50 U.S. city-markets. We match scanner data on local market shares and survey data on local quality perceptions for the largest brands in 34 consumer packaged goods industries. These data are then matched with historic information on the year and US city-market in which each brand was first launched. We find that these consumer brands have persistently higher market sha
REVISION: Do Switching Costs Make Markets Less Competitive?
Date Posted: Jan 19, 2009
The conventional wisdom in economic theory holds that switching costs make markets less competitive. This paper challenges this claim. We find that steady-state equilibrium prices may fall as switching costs are introduced into a simple model of dynamic price competition that allows for differentiated products and imperfect lock-in. To assess whether this finding is of empirical relevance, we consider a more general model with heterogeneous consumers. We calibrate this model with data from a
REVISION: Accounting for Primary and Secondary Demand Effects with Aggregate Data
Date Posted: Jun 11, 2008
Discrete choice models of aggregate demand, such as the random coefficients logit, can handle large differentiated products categories parsimoniously while still providing flexible substitution patterns. However, the discrete choice assumption may not be appropriate for many categories in which we expect consumers may purchase more than one unit of the selected item. We derive the aggregate demand system corresponding to a discrete/continuous household-level model of demand. We also propose a Me
New: Prominence Effect in Shanghai Apartment Prices
Date Posted: May 23, 2008
A field study conducted in Shanghai identified a robust inconsistency between real estate developers' desired sales pattern (selling all apartments in a building at similar rates) and the actual sales pattern (selling good apartments faster). The authors explained this inconsistency with Tversky, Sattath, and Slovic (1988)'s prominence principle, according to which buyers, who were in a choice mode, weighed the desirability of floors more heavily than developers, who were in a matching mode when
Estimating an SKU-level Brand Choice Model Combining Household Panel Data and Store Data
Date Posted: Apr 22, 2008
The extant literature using household scanner data to estimate consumer choice models has identified two key sources of bias in estimated mean responses to marketing variables. Omitted heterogeneity may bias mean responses towards zero. At the same time, omitted time-varying characteristics of alternatives that influence consumer choices may also bias mean responses towards zero if these characteristics are correlated with observed factors such as price - the endogeneity bias. Both these issu
Product Differentiation and Mergers in the Carbonated Soft Drink Industry
Date Posted: Apr 22, 2008
I simulate the competitive impact of several soft drink mergers from the 1980s on equilibrium prices and quantities. An unusual feature of soft drink demand is that, at the individual purchase level, households regularly select a variety of soft drink products. Specifically, on a given trip households may select multiple soft drink products and multiple units of each. A concern is that using a standard discrete choice model that assumes single unit purchases may understate the price elasticity o
Empirical Analysis of Indirect Network Effects in the Market for Personal Digital Assistants
Date Posted: Apr 22, 2008
We present a framework to measure empirically the size of indirect network effects in high-technology markets with competing incompatible technology standards. These indirect network effects arise due to inter-dependence in demand for hardware and compatible software. By modeling the joint determination of hardware sales and software availability in the market, we are able to describe the nature of demand inter-dependence and to measure the size of the indirect network effects. We apply the mode
New: Cross-Brand Pass-Through in Supermarket Pricing
Date Posted: Jan 30, 2008
We investigate the sensitivity of cross-brand pass-through estimates to two types of pooling: across stores, and across regular price and promotional price weeks. Using the category data from Besanko, Dubé and Gupta (2005), hereafter BDG, we find consistent support across all 11 categories for the predictive power of the wholesale prices of substitute products for retail shelf prices. A Bayesian procedure is used to address the small sample issues that arise in the absence of pooling. Even thoug
REVISION: Tipping and Concentration in Markets with Indirect Network Effects
Date Posted: Jan 25, 2008
This paper develops a framework to measure 'tipping' - the increase in a firm's market share dominance caused by indirect network effects. Our measure compares the expected concentration in a market to the hypothetical expected concentration that would arise in the absence of indirect network effects. In practice, this measure requires a model that can predict the counter-factual market concentration under different parameter values capturing the strength of indirect network effects. We build su
REVISION: Category Pricing with State Dependent Utility
Date Posted: Dec 09, 2006
There is a substantial literature that documents the presence of state dependent utility with packaged goods data. Typically, a form of brand loyalty is detected whereby there is a higher probability of purchasing the same brand as has been purchased in the recent past. The economic significance of the measured loyalty remains an open question. We consider the category pricing problem in the presence of loyalty and demonstrate that a retailer has an incentive to invest in building brand loyal
New: A Behavioral Analysis of Shanghai Real Estate Prices
Date Posted: Aug 29, 2006
In a field study, we identified an intriguing inconsistency between real estate developers' desired sales pattern (selling all apartments at the same rate) and the actual sales pattern (selling good apartments faster). We explained this inconsistency with Tversky, Sattath and Slovic (1988)'s prominence principle, according to which buyers, who were in a choice mode, weighed the desirability of floors more heavily than developers, who were in a matching mode when setting prices. We corroborated o
Banner Advertising as a Customer Retention Tool in Customer Relationship Management
Date Posted: Jan 05, 2006
One of the major advances of the digital economy is the facilitation of building and managing individual customer relationships - a process usually referred to as "customer relationship management" or CRM. For a typical web site selling frequently-purchased consumer items, the most important stage of CRM is customer retention. This is because the long-term viability of a website is based on its ability to retain a significant customer base. In this study, we focus on a hitherto unexplored questi
An Empirical Model of Advertising Dynamics
Date Posted: Jan 31, 2005
We develop a model of dynamic advertising and apply it to the problem of optimal advertising scheduling through time. In many industries we observe advertising pulsing, whereby firms systematically switch advertising on and off at a high-frequency. The previous literature has explained such patterns through an S-shaped sales response to advertising, and long-run effects of advertising on demand (advertising carry-over). We extend a discrete choice based demand system to allow for a threshold in
Endogenous Sunk Costs and the Geographic Distribution of Brand Shares in Consumer Package Goods Indu
Date Posted: Jan 20, 2005
This paper describes industrial market structure in consumer package goods (CPG) industries using a unique database spanning 31 industries and the 50 largest US metropolitan markets. A general set of stylized facts is documented pertaining mainly to the geographic patterns in brand shares. A connection between the patterns and a model of endogenous sunk costs in advertising is established by testing several predictions of the theory. We establish that concentration is bounded below in advertisin
Empirical Analysis of Indirect Network Effects in the Market for Personal Digital Assistants
Date Posted: Mar 15, 2004
We present a framework to measure empirically the size of indirect network effects in high-technology markets with competing incompatible technology standards. These indirect network effects arise due to inter-dependence in demand for hardware and compatible software. By modeling the joint determination of hardware sales and software availability in the market, we are able to describe the nature of demand inter-dependence and to measure the size of the indirect network effects. We apply the mode