Raphael Thomadsen - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Raphael Thomadsen

Marketing Science, Sep 1, 2007

T his paper demonstrates that increased product differentiation will make it more difficult to su... more T his paper demonstrates that increased product differentiation will make it more difficult to sustain collusion when it is costly to coordinate or maintain collusion. This result holds for a wide range of models, including all those commonly used to model competition between differentiated products. This contrasts with the previous theoretical literature, which shows that, in the absence of these costs, greater differentiation can help foster collusion under some common models of product differentiation but is consistent with the empirical literature, which suggests that collusion tends to occur most among homogeneous firms.

Harvard Business Review, Apr 1, 2013

ABSTRACT (from the article) In 67% of cases observed during a study of grocers in Massachusetts a... more ABSTRACT (from the article) In 67% of cases observed during a study of grocers in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, Pampers’ revenue rose after stores added more kinds of Huggies diapers.

Marketing Letters, Feb 1, 2008

This paper outlines the methods and applications related to the nascent area of empirical discret... more This paper outlines the methods and applications related to the nascent area of empirical discrete games in marketing. Many key strategic decisions firms make involve discrete choices such as deciding the location of a new store, determining where in product space to position a product, or what options to offer in a service contract. These decisions are fairly complex and typically involve the consideration of a number of demand, cost, and competitive factors. What makes these discrete choices particularly interesting (and challenging to analyze) is that they are interrelated with the choices of other firms because firms take into account the actions of their competitors when making their own decisions. We describe the basic problem of dealing with interrelated discrete choices in a game-theoretic framework and present the various estimation methods available. A discussion of the existing applications and future research opportunities concludes the article.

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1509 Jmr 10 0164, May 29, 2013

Page 1. Seeking an Expanding Competitor: How Product Line Expansion Can Increase All Firms' ... more Page 1. Seeking an Expanding Competitor: How Product Line Expansion Can Increase All Firms' Profits Raphael Thomadsen UCLA May, 2011 Page 2. ... Dogan, Haruvy and Rao (2010) show that firms can benefit when their competitor offers a rebate. ...

Management Science, May 7, 2015

Purchase shares of major national-brands in consumer packaged-goods industries vary substantially... more Purchase shares of major national-brands in consumer packaged-goods industries vary substantially across stores, both between geographic markets and across stores within markets. We measure the relationship between the variation in national-brand purchase shares and five store-specific marketing mix factors: prices, assortment shares, features, displays, and promotion intensity. We do this by first demonstrating the extent to which purchase shares of the top two national brands across 6 different categories vary across markets, accounts (defined as chain-market interactions) and stores: market-level variation accounts for approximately 30% of the weekly purchase-share variation across stores, while account-level and store-level variation explain an additional 13% and 5% of the variation, respectively. We then measure the extent to which assortment, pricing, feature, display, and promotion activities affect the purchase shares of the top national brands. We find that price and assortment share are the two most-important point-of-sale factors in determining a brand’s purchase share. We also examine how the proximity to a brand’s city of origin, the assortment share of a store’s private label, the extent of retail competition, and the demographics of the store’s neighborhood affect the purchase share’s sensitivity to the point-of-sale marketing mix, revealing several subtle effects. Finally, we measure the extent to which the variation in top national-brand purchase shares is explained by these five factors. We find that, on average, approximately 56% of the variation in national-brand purchase shares can be attributed to these five factors. These results demonstrate the potential importance of trade marketing on a brand’s purchase shares.

Management Science Journal of the Institute For Operations Research and the Management Sciences, 2013

ABSTRACT We analyze price and quality competition in a vertically differentiated duopoly in which... more ABSTRACT We analyze price and quality competition in a vertically differentiated duopoly in which consumers have a preference for variety. The variety-seeking preferences are a consequence of diminishing marginal utility for repeated consumption experiences of the same product. We find that variety-seeking preferences can either soften or intensify price competition, depending on the range of feasible qualities and the strength of consumer preference for variety. When the range of feasible qualities is small enough, prices are higher than would be obtained in the absence of variety seeking - leading to higher profits - and competing firms choose to minimally differentiate themselves from each other. On the other hand, if qualities are exogenously set to be different enough from each other then stronger preferences for variety are associated with moreintense price competition and lower profits

International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2015

Management Science, Feb 1, 2011

Companies and managers are apt to forget information, yet game theory assumes that all players ha... more Companies and managers are apt to forget information, yet game theory assumes that all players have perfect recall. This paper expands the literature by examining how introducing forgetfulness into a multi-player game-theoretic framework can help or hinder cooperative behavior. We distinguish between forgetting histories and forgetting strategies, and explain how classic game theory models and equilibrium concepts should be adapted to accommodate imperfect recall. We find that forgetfulness impacts the ability of firms to cooperate in countervailing directions. On the one hand, forgetfulness can diminish the ability to punish deviators, making cooperation more difficult. On the other hand, forgetfulness can make meting out severe punishments credible, and if the players forget their strategies then forgetfulness can also decrease the ability for players to effectively deviate, facilitating cooperation. When players forget their strategies, their reduced ability to deviate may be so severe that the equilibrium payoff may be below the minimax

Journal of Poverty, Nov 11, 2008

This paper demonstrates that minimum wage laws need not induce unemployment even under the classi... more This paper demonstrates that minimum wage laws need not induce unemployment even under the classic labor supply and demand paradigm. As a result, minimum wage laws can be welfare-enhancing under the basic labor supply and demand model, suggesting the presence of an optimal minimum wage. We discuss conditions under which the optimal minimum wage level is the subsistence wage level. As a consequence, minimum wages should vary across states or countries with the local subsistence levels.

Customer Needs and Solutions, 2015

This paper gives a proof of existence of price equilibria under certain parameters for a model of... more This paper gives a proof of existence of price equilibria under certain parameters for a model of product differentiation commonly used in the empirical geographic differentiation literature. This proof is needed because the assumptions of Caplin and Nalebuff (1991) are not generally satisfied once data is introduced to geographic models. The theorem also has implications for existence in mixed-logit demand

I analyze how ownership structure and market geography jointly influence fast food prices. I esti... more I analyze how ownership structure and market geography jointly influence fast food prices. I estimate a model of demand and supply that accounts for the market geography and run counterfactual experiments that demonstrate how mergers affect prices. I find that the impact of mergers can be large, that this impact decreases as the merging outlets are farther apart, that mergers

This paper examines the relationship between store switching and state dependence in consumer bra... more This paper examines the relationship between store switching and state dependence in consumer brand choice. T he classic structural state dependence literature models inertia in brand choice by assuming that consumers experience an extra boost in utility from consuming the products they last purchased. We demonstrate that the level of inertia depends on the context in which the purchase was made, which suggests that a richer decision process is driving the sta te dependence. Specifically, we find that consumers exhibit more state dependence if they shop at the same store that they previously patronized as compared to if they switch to a different store. This result replicates across 18 consumer packaged goods (C PG) supermarket categories . We find that the median consumer’s increased state dependence from shopping at the same store vs. a different store translates into an addition al 33¢ premium (or 12% of the average price) per purchase. When consumers switch back to a store they ...

Management Science, 2015