零售商异质性与零售价格维持

Retailer Heterogeneity and Resale Price Maintenance

本论文研究在零售商异质情况下零售价格维持(Resale Price Maintenance)的福利效应。我们考虑一家生产商通过竞争的零售商在两个社区出售其产品。一个社区内的零售商们有着相同的边际销售成本，但不同社区的零售商有不同的边际成本。通过控制零售价格，生产商可以直接制订最优的价格。从而允许零售商从消费者得到更多的收益。零售价格维持鼓励高成本的零售商提供更多的销售，这使得总的销售成本增加。因此，品牌内部的竞争程度降低不仅可能损害消费者的利益，也不利于社会的整体利益。

This paper studies the welfare implications of resale price maintenance (RPM) when retailers are heterogeneous. We consider a market where a manufacturer sells its product to consumers in two regions through competitive retailers. The retailers' marginal dealing costs are identical within each region but are different between the two regions. With RPM the manufacturer can directly choose the optimal retail price and allow the retailers to extract more revenue from the consumers. RPM encourages high-cost retailers to provide more sales, which raises the total dealing costs. Reduced intra-brand competition hurts both the consumers and the society.