Signaling quality in vertical relationships

Philippe Bontems and Philippe Mahenc

No 819, IDEI Working Papers from Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse

Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of price signaling in a model of vertical relationship between a manufacturer and a retailer who share the same information about quality, unlike consumers who do not observe it a priori. We show that delegating the price setting task to a retailer and controlling it through a vertical contract (two-part tariff) helps drastically reduce the number of price signaling equilibria available to the retailer. The outcome of a unique price charged to consumers obtains without invoking the consumer sophistication usually required by selection criterions. The vertical contract turns to be the most e¢ cient way for the vertical chain to tie its hands on a unique ?nal price. This price may disclose or not information to consumers depending on their initial optimism about quality. We prove that there also exists circumstances where consumers prefer ex ante not to learn the true quality through price.

Keywords: quality signalling; vertical relationship; information disclosure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 L12 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cta, nep-ind, nep-mic and nep-mkt
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Working Paper: Signaling quality in vertical relationships (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ide:wpaper:27906

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