Competitive Price-Matching Guarantees: Equilibrium Analysis of the Availability Verification Clause Under Demand Uncertainty
研究了零售商在价格匹配保证中加入产品可用性验证条款的影响，发现该条款加剧了库存和价格竞争，虽提高消费者剩余但降低零售商利润，因此并非均衡策略。
Price-matching guarantees involve a retailer matching the lower price of a competitor for an identical product. In reality, retailers often make such guarantees contingent on the verification of product availability at the competitor's location, and decline a price-match request if the product is not available there. This creates certain consternation on the part of customers. In this paper, we investigate the availability contingency strategy from the perspectives of both the retailers and the customers. Our analysis shows that availability contingency clauses intensify inventory competition between retailers and reinstitutes price competition, which is otherwise eliminated by unconditional price-matching guarantees. Consequently, despite what customers may think about the availability verification, it actually increases their surplus. On the other hand, such a clause reduces profits and, hence, is not the equilibrium strategy for retailers. Subsequently, we discuss how a likely customer behaviour pattern may be a plausible explanation regarding the use of the clause by the retailers in practice. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.