Consumer Inertia and Market Power

Alexander  MacKay; Marc  Remer

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

Consumer Inertia and Market Power

Abstract

We study the pricing decision of firms in the presence of consumer inertia. Inertia can arise from habit formation, brand loyalty, switching costs, or search, and it has important implications for the interpretation of equilibrium outcomes and counterfactual analysis. In particular, consumer inertia affects the scope of market power. We show that the effects of competition on prices and profits are non-monotonic in the degree of inertia. Further, a model that omits consumer inertia tends to overstate the marginal effect of competition on price, relative to a benchmark that accounts for consumer dynamics. We develop an empirical model to estimate consumer inertia using aggregate, market-level data. We apply the model to a hypothetical merger of two major retail gasoline companies, and we find that a static model predicts price increases greater than the price increases predicted when accounting for dynamics.

Keywords: consumer inertia; market power; dynamic competition; demand estimation; Consumer Behavior; Markets; Performance; Competition; Price;

Language: English

Format: Print

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Citation:

MacKay, Alexander, and Marc Remer. "Consumer Inertia and Market Power." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-111, April 2019.

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Consumer Inertia and Market Power

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