What can I do for you? Optimal market segmentation in service markets
研究两家服务企业针对异质顾客进行价格竞争时，因签约后产生顾客特定服务成本，如何影响垄断和双寡头市场中的最优定价与市场细分策略，并证明高竞争行业仍能获得正预期利润。
This paper considers price competition in a market where two firms sell a homogeneous service to a continuum of customers differing with respect to some exogenous characteristic. Our paper's novelty consists of explicitly acknowledging a distinctive property of many services in that firms incur customer‐specific service costs after the contract is signed. Hence, not only the customers' willingness‐to‐pay and as such demand but also the firms' supply are related to customer characteristics. In this paper, we shed light on the implications thereof for optimal pricing and market segmentation strategies in a monopoly as well as a duopoly market. Importantly, we stress the profitability of services by demonstrating that firms in highly competitive industries still earn positive expected profits in equilibrium.