Competition when Consumers have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade

Paul Klemperer

The Review of Economic Studies, 1995, vol. 62, issue 4, 515-539

Abstract: We survey recent work on competition in markets in which consumers have costs of switching between competing firms' products. In a market with switching costs (or "brand loyalty"), a firm's current market share is an important determinant of its future profitability. We examine how the firm's choice between setting a low price to capture market share, and setting a high price to harvest profits by exploiting its current locked-in customers, is affected by the threat of new entry, interest rates, exchange rate expectations, the state of the business cycle, etc. We also discuss the causes of switching costs; explain introductory offers and price wars; examine industry profits; and analyse firms' product choices. Moreover, we argue that switching costs between suppliers help explain both the existance of multi-product firms and the nature of competition between such firms.

Date: 1995
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (681)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2298075 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:62:y:1995:i:4:p:515-539.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().