Price matching by vertically differentiated retailers: Theory and evidence

Sridhar Moorthy, Xubing Zhang

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This research examines vertically differentiated retailers' incentives to offer price-matching guarantees. It suggests that offering and not offering a price-matching guarantee are both signals of a retailer's service-price profile, a way of branding the retailer to uninformed consumers. The signals are made credible and costless by the presence of informed consumers. The authors show that when the service differentiation is large enough, only low-service retailers offer price-matching guarantees. Data from a sample of Canadian retail chains support this prediction. In addition, larger retail chains are more likely to offer price-matching guarantees than smaller chains, and competition has an interactive effect with service. As the intensity of competition a chain faces increases, lower-service retailers are even more likely to use a guarantee, and higher-service retailers are less likely to do so, suggesting that price-matching guarantees are competitive tools, not collusive tools, as the literature has often implied.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)156-167
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Marketing Research
Volume43
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2006

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Business and International Management
  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Marketing

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Price matching by vertically differentiated retailers: Theory and evidence'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this